LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Ibeatb's JEngltsb Classics 



Prometheus Unbound 



A Lyrical Drama 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 



EDITED BY 

VIDA D. SCUDDER, M.A. 



. .,: - , - 
BOSTON, U.S.A. 

PUBLISHED BY D. C. HEATH & CO. 






Copyright, 1892, 
By VIDA D. SCUDDER. 



J 2- 3 



Typography by J. S. Cushing & Co., Boston, U.S.A. 



PREFACE. 



No student's edition exists of the Prometheus Unbound, 
the greatest work of Shelley. Because of its length, abstruse- 
ness, and difficulty, the drama has been little used in the 
classroom : and, indeed, while its aesthetic glory has been 
fully recognized, its spiritual and historical significance has 
till lately been often ignored, even by lovers of Shelley. Yet 
the Prometheus Unbound gives perhaps the most perfect 
expression anywhere to be found of the thought and passion 
of a great period of English poetry. It fully initiates the 
earnest student into the ideals of the Revolution — those 
ideals which, in their development, are determining the trend 
of our modern life. Thesis no need to speak of the imagi- 
native fervor and pure lyricism of the drama : few English 
poems can be more effective to quicken and train aesthetic 
sensitiveness. So far as difficulty is concerned, the student 
who can understand the Faery Queene can understand the 
Prometheus Unbound. 

It is hoped that the present edition may make the poem 
more widely known to the general reader, and more available 
for purposes of the classroom. The aim has been to supply 

iii 



iv PREFACE. 

a good critical apparatus for the study of the drama as a 
work of art and as an historic product. To this end, the 
Introduction discusses the different aspects of the drama, 
and the Notes deal largely with suggestions for comparative 
study and with extracts from the best criticisms on the poem. 
Mythological and historic allusions to be found in ordinary 
reference-books are not explained. 

The text followed is that of Forman's edition, except in 
two or three instances where a different reading has been 
adopted. Such instances are always mentioned in the Notes. 

Much help has of course been derived from the critics 
and interpreters of Shelley, especially from Todhunter, Ros- 
setti, James Thomson, Dowden, and Symonds. For the 
" Suggestions towards a Comparison of the Prometheus 
Unbound of Shelley with the Prometheus Bound of ^schy- 
lus," I am indebted to the work of my friend, Miss Lucy H. 
Smith, A.B. 

VIDA D. SCUDDER. 

Wellesley College, 
August, 1892. 



CONTENTS. 



Preface 

Introduction : 

I. The Drama and the Time . 
II. A Study of the Myth . 

III. The Drama as a Work of Art 
Shelley's Preface .... 

Prometheus Unbound .... 
Suggestions towards a Comparison of Prometheus Un 

bound with the prometheus bound of yeschylus 

Notes 

Extracts from Criticisms on Prometheus Unbound . 
Bibliography of Prometheus Unbound 



PAGE 

iii 



IX 

xxvii 

xlii 

3 

9 

121 

167 
171 



INTRODUCTION. 



INTRODUCTION. 



D^C 



THE DRAMA AND THE TIME. 

Shelley's lyrical drama, the Prometheus Unbound, is 
unique in the great cycle of English song. From the larger 
part of that song it is distinguished at once by an audacious 
idealism. Generalizations are dangerous ; yet we may surely 
say that the dominant trend of our sturdy English literature 
has been towards realism. ' In the Middle Ages, English 
Chaucer sings with frank and buoyant vigor of the fair 
green earth beneath him and the men and women at his 
side, while Italian Dante penetrates with fervid passion the 
spiritual spheres open to mediaeval vision, and brings back 
strange messages from the souls of the lost and of the 
blessed. The Elizabethan imagination claps a girdle round 
the earth, but rarely soars into the heavens. It is the Ger- 
man genius, not the English, which expresses the struggle of 
the human soul in a shadowy protagonist, embodiment of the 
symbolism of the ages, and replaces a Hamlet known to his- 
tory by a legendary Faust. The idealism of Milton seems, 
beside that of Dante, intellectual and forced. The litera- 
ture of the eighteenth century is the transcript of the life of 
society ; Victorian literature is the transcript of the life of the 

ix 



X PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

soul. Everywhere our English genius tends to express itself 
through forms of experience and of fact. 

The early poetry of the nineteenth century is a notable 
exception to this principle. The work of Wordsworth and 
Coleridge, of Keats and Shelley, is in tone frankly ideal. 
The idealism which pervades all the writings of these poets, 
from the Ancient Mariner to Hyperion, finds its fullest 
and most glorious manifestation in the Prometheus Un- 
bound, which is the supreme achievement of Shelley. De- 
spite the wondrous nature-poetry of the drama, the whole 
action takes place, not on this solid earth of hill and forest, 
but in an unknown region which has no existence outside 
the soul of man. The personages are vast abstractions, dim 
though luminous ; like wraiths of mist in morning sunlight 
they drift around us, appearing, vanishing, in mystic sequence. 
Over the whole drama plays, though with broken and waver- 
ing lustre, the "light that never was on sea or land," and 
not once does the "poet's dream" change to the sober 
world of waking fact. 

Yet to speak of the Prometheus Unbound as the highest 
expression of modern English idealism is hardly to justify 
our claim that the drama is unique. We find much con- 
temporary poetry of the same order, although less great ; 
and our English genius is, moreover, too plastic to lack 
entirely, at any period, the ideal element. It is in a work 
of the sixteenth century that we find the closest parallel to 
the Prometheus Unbound. Edmund Spenser, during the 
full dominance of Elizabethan realism, is as pure an idealist 
as Shelley, and the Faery Queene and the modern drama 
are in many ways strangely akin. At a glance, this kinship 
is obvious. The two poems belong alike to that highest 



INTR OD UC TION. XI 

order of imaginative work which includes the Book of Job, 
Faust, Paracelsus, and claims as its greatest example the 
Divine Comedy of Dante. Both poems deal with spiritual 
forces, with the eternal conflict of good and evil ; the action 
to be wrought out is in both the final redemption of the 
soul of man. The Faery Queene, like the Prometheus, 
transports us to an unreal world, where forms of visionary 
beauty speak to us, not of concrete human life, but of ethical 
and spiritual truth. Both poems, in a word, are symbolic. 

Yet the more thoughtfully we read, the sooner will a radi- 
cal difference between the spirit of the two poems become 
manifest, — a difference so great that it will force us to put the 
poem of Shelley quite by itself. For the Faery Queene is 
an allegory ; the Prometheus Unbound not only deals with 
mythological conceptions, it is a genuine myth. 

In the Faery Queene, the relation of the forms to the 
ideas is the result of the conscious and deliberate invention 
of Spenser. Una, says the poet to himself, shall stand for 
Truth, Guyon for Temperance, Archimago for Hypocrisy. 
The characters, thus laden with double meaning, are made 
to pass through various significant adventures. Sometimes 
the allegory grows tedious to Spenser, and he drops it from 
consciousness, seeing for the time in his creations only 
ladies faire and lovely knights, instead of the Christian 
virtues ; more often still it grows tedious to the reader, who 
gladly forgets all didactic suggestion, to wander dreamily 
through an enchanted land. The connection between story 
and meaning, not only here but in all allegories, is arbitrary 
rather than essential. 

No one can read the Prometheus Unbound without feel- 
ing a different method of conception at work. Asia, lone, 



xii PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

Panthea, Prometheus himself, all the actors in the drama, 
are indeed impersonations of abstract qualities, and the 
whole action is spiritual in undercurrent, though on the 
surface natural. But the connection between natural and 
spiritual is no longer arbitrary. There has been no painful 
invention, unless in some minor details ; these figures have 
flashed upon the inner vision of the poet in perfect unity of 
soul and form. Where an allegory is reasoned and labored, 
a myth is instinctive and spontaneous. The systematic for- 
mality of the allegory is replaced in the myth by something 
of the large, divinely simple significance of the very symbol- 
ism of nature. An allegory is the result of experience ; a 
myth, of intuition. 

Now, to speak of the Prometheus Unbound as a myth 
seems at first sight to involve a contradiction. It is incon- 
sistent with our idea of poetic development ; for the evolu- 
tion of the myth is almost entirely confined to the childhood 
of races. This is inevitable, since the myth is an uncon- 
scious form of art, and unconsciousness belongs to child- 
hood. The wide-eyed and reverent wonder of the child sees 
in this new world of life and mystery around him spiritual 
creations pressing everywhere through the material veil. 
His instinctive faith cannot survive the familiarity with 
earthly facts, the scientific temper, of maturity. Analysis 
has replaced intuition ; wonder is lost in curiosity. — 

" There was an awful rainbow full in Heaven : 
We know its name and nature; it is given 
In the dull catalogue of common things," 

mourns Keats. Thus it is in the infancy of the Aryan race, 
in the early days of Hellas, in the vigorous youth of the 



INTR OD UCTION. Xlll 

Norsemen, that we find the great myth cycles treasured by 
our scholars to-day, — poem-stories, with the dawn-light 
fresh upon them. Through our own oldest epic, Beowulf, 
even yet flash traces of the myth ; but they soon fade out, 
never to reappear, replaced by the frank and sunny natural- 
ism of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Browning. 

Never to reappear? Not so. In the early days of our 
own century, when the English race had passed through 
many a stern experience, when it had gathered much of the 
bitter wisdom of maturity into its thought and speech, once 
more it was to dream dreams and see visions, and the fairest 
of these dreams was to be given to the world through 
the poet-soul of Shelley, a genuine and beautiful myth, in 
the form of the Prometheus Unbound. Prometheus, Asia, 
lone, — their likeness is to be sought, not in a Macbeth, a 
Desdemona, or a Pompilia, but in Thetis the silver-footed, 
in Perseus, slayer of the Gorgon, in Athene, child of Zeus. 
The mystic action of the drama recalls, not the human stir 
and passion of our modern tragedy, but the solemn move- 
ment of the stories of the elder world. The Prometheus 
Unbound is no mere retelling of an ancient tale, like the 
Greek poems of William Morris ; it is in all essentials an 
original conception. The drama starts, indeed, from the 
/Eschylean story, but the development of the action, the 
personages, the mode of treatment, are absolutely the poet's 
own. Like the tales of gods and heroes in the Homeric 
cycle, even more like the treatment of these stories with a 
fuller spiritual consciousness in the work of the Greek trage- 
dians, are the great imaginings of Shelley. 

The age of Pope and the age of Tennyson are both times 
of peculiar self-consciousness and elaboration. Between 



xiv PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

these two ages reappears, for one brief moment, the myth. 
In the whole history of English song there is no stranger 
paradox than this. It challenges our attention at once. If 
we wish to understand it, we first turn instinctively to the 
great poetry which comes within the same period as the 
Prometheus. 

The drama was written in 1819; thus it belongs to the 
greatest cycle of English song since the Elizabethan age. 
Within the years 15 90- 1630 falls the chief work of Spen- 
ser, of the Elizabethan lyrists, of Marlowe, Shakespeare, and 
Ben Jonson. Within the years 1 790-1830 falls the finest 
work of Blake and Burns, of Wordsworth and Coleridge, of 
Byron, Keats, and Shelley. We know now that those years 
at the beginning of our century were great indeed ; we know 
that the poems sung in them hold their own even by the 
side of the wonderful poetry of three centuries before. If 
we look at the poetic work of the first third of our century 
as a whole, we shall be struck by its great variety ; yet we 
shall also be struck, in the midst of all the variety, by a cer- 
tain all-pervasive unity of tone. It is the tone of youth, of 
freshness, of exuberance of life. 

The poetry of the eighteenth century was tired. It had 
repeated the wisdom of a worldly old age. It laid stress on 
etiquette, on custom, on detail ; it submitted to cautious 
rules ; and, when not artificially lively, it displayed a sober 
and disillusioned strength. Close now Pope or Thomson, 
and open Blake, Burns, Wordsworth. Strange discovery ! 
Through this poetry, later though it be, the music of an 
eternal youth goes ringing. The tone of wonder, of eager- 
ness, of fulness of life, either for joy or pain, is the great 
quality which distinguishes the outburst of song at the first 



INTR OD UC TION. XV 

of our century from the exhausted verse of the preceding 
age. It is impossible to tell all the different manifestations 
of this new youthfulness. The very cadence, the outward 
form of verse, have cast aside the grave restrictions imposed 
by a self-conscious period, and move with the buoyant and 
varied grace of adolescence ; the literal child appears for 
the first time in Burns and Blake and Wordsworth ; the rest- 
less and passionate speculation of youth glances through the 
poems of Byron, Coleridge, and Shelley. Finally, the myth- 
opceic faculty is by no means confined to the Prometheus 
Unbound, though it finds fullest expression there. There 
is no evidence of this faculty in the poetry of the eighteenth 
century, or of the Victorian age ; but poetry from Blake to 
Keats is veined with it. In Blake, indeed, it is dominant, 
but fails to reach its full effect, because his imaginings, 
though mighty, are broken and obscure. We find clear 
traces of the myth in the poems of Coleridge, notably the 
Ancient Mariner. Keats is not sensitive to the spiritual 
possibilities of the myth, but, so far as aesthetic instinct will 
carry him, he has the true myth-creating power; gods, 
nymphs, and Titans breathe in living beauty in the pages 
of Endymion and Hyperion. To Shelley, as to the an- 
cient Greeks, the myth is the expression of worship, and the 
mythopceic faculty appears, disciplined, free, and triumphant, 
in the Prometheus Unbound. 

How shall we explain the bright youthfulness of all this 
poetry? We must explain it by studying the historic period 
from which it sprang. For poetry strikes its roots deep into 
the soil of national life, and it is from the passions and ideals 
of history that we must find the inspiration of our poets. 
English verse at the beginning of the century is great be- 



xvi PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

cause it is the expression and outcome of a great period. 
No sooner do we study the period than the distinctive qual- 
ities of the poetry are explained. Its renewed joy and free- 
dom are but the expression of the new life that was pulsing 
through the veins of the old earth. For this is the great 
period of the birth of the modern world. 

We may best understand the Prometheus Unbound if 
we recognize it as the supreme expression in imaginative 
form of the new spirit of democracy. The ideas which in- 
spire it first found dynamic power in the Revolution of 1 789. 
Thus the significance of our paradox is revealed. For myths 
belong to the dawn ; and the beginning of our century wit- 
nessed the dawn of a new cosmic day. We may say in sober 
reverence that not since the coming of Christ had so vital a 
renovating power entered human life as entered it one hun- 
dred years ago. It is natural and beautiful that this new 
beginning should be heralded by the return of the spirit of 
childhood, and that the wondering faith of the time should 
once more as in the days of old find expression through con- 
crete symbol. At one moment and one only in the evolution 
of English song since the time of Beowulf, was possible 
the formation of a myth ; and at this moment appeared the 
man to create it. Only at the beginning of the nineteenth 
century, only by the man Shelley, could the Prometheus 
Unbound have been written. 

This view of the Prometheus Unbound will, it is true, 
be challenged by a whole school of critics. The drama is 
woven of dreams, they will tell us ; it is a maze of color and 
music, devoid of definite structure. Shall we turn the most 
ethereal of poets into a doctrinaire? What relation has 
poetry like this, of imagination all compact, to theories of 



INTRODUCTION. xvii 

life ? Above all, what relation can it bear to that democracy 
which is all around us, practical, blatant, vulgar? The 
eternal value of the Prometheus Unbound — thus perhaps 
say most of the readers of the drama — lies in its poignant 
melody, its exquisite imagery, in the wondrous beauty of 
fragments scattered here and there through the poem. These 
are immortal. But the intellectual conceptions of Shelley 
were simply the accidents of his youth, to be forgotten if 
we would read his poetry aright; and for the underlying 
thought of the drama, for its unity of structure, for the mean- 
ing of Prometheus and Demogorgon and Panthea and the 
other shadowy mouth-pieces of matchless verse, not one whit 
will the enlightened critic care. 

Thus to speak is to deny all scientific conceptions of litera- 
ture ; for it is to deny the connection of the poet with his 
age. Much, indeed, is crude and weak in the verse of 
Shelley ; much is held in his immature intellect, and is never 
fused by his imaginative passion into art ; but the very warp 
and woof of his noblest poetry is in subtle and secret ways 
determined by that faith which aesthetic cynics would teach 
us to ignore. Shelley would never have been the greatest 
lyric poet of England, would never have written the Ode to 
the West Wind nor the choruses to Hellas, had he been an 
aristocrat and a conservative. The passion for freedom and 
the aspiration towards a universal love sway his thought as 
they sway his form. 

In order, then, to understand the Prometheus Unbound, 
we must look more fully at the place held by England and 
by Shelley in the evolution of the democratic idea. It was 
by France that the idea was first given to the world in deeds, 
— deeds stormy, passionate, marked by the horror of blood- 



XVlil PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

shed. France, most impetuous of nations, France, mad- 
dened by centuries of oppression, received the trust of work- 
ing out the historic revolution. But this was only half of the 
work to be accomplished. To express the democratic idea 
in brief, historic act was the work of France ; to express it 
in eternal art was the work of England. All poetry, says 
Wordsworth, is the product of emotion recollected in tran- 
quillity. France, absorbed in fierce and exhausting struggle, 
could not stop to write poetry ; yet the idea of democracy, 
like all really vital ideas, had to find expression in art before 
it could become a precious possession forever to the nations. 
Here came in the work of England. Her noblest children, 
touched to high and tense emotion by the great days in 
which they lived, were yet sufficiently remote from the strug- 
gle to possess their souls in that serenity which is the neces- 
sary condition of all great art. To the poets of England, 
from Burns and Blake to Shelley, belongs the glory of having 
first given to the democratic idea an embodiment of undying 
power. 

Very diverse is the influence of the new ideal upon their 
work. Wordsworth and Coleridge, the two older poets, 
were contemporaries of the historic revolution. In the eager 
days of their youth they lived through the swift revolutionary 
drama, with its changes from rapturous hope to terror and 
despair. Absorbed in the turmoil of the time, there is small 
wonder that they were unable to distinguish the absolute from 
the local, or that they reacted, in sober middle life, from the 
ardor of their democratic faith. The effect of democracy in 
the work even of Wordsworth is indirect, although profound, 
and shows itself rather by leading the imaginative love of the 
poet to the noble life of the simple and the poor than by in- 



INTR OD UC TION. XIX 

flaming him with enthusiasm for the grand abstract ideas of 
the Revolution. The few poems of both Wordsworth and 
Coleridge which treat directly of the new faith are occasional 
in theme. We must seek a point of view which affords a 
farther perspective, if we desire a vision of the democratic faith 
in its fulness, freed from the dominance of incidental detail. 

Such a point of view was to be found in the second dec- 
ade of our century. Three men, in this decade, hold the 
supreme honors of English song : Byron, Keats, and Shel- 
ley. Of these, Keats represents the aesthetic reaction from 
the passion for humanity which had possessed the soul of the 
race for over twenty years. Through his verse sweeps the 
fragrance of the world of dreams ; redolent of beauty, it no- 
where breathes suggestion of allegiance to a hard-won truth, 
nor of feeling for actual human need. Byron, on the other 
hand, is distinctly a poet of the Revolution, but of the Rev- 
olution mainly on its inferior and destructive side. His 
verse rings with rebellion and despair. The historic revolu- 
tion had failed : its ardent faith, its glowing hopes, were 
despised, during the hollow years of the Empire, by all chil- 
dren of the world. A child of the world was Byron ; and 
for him and his fellows nothing was left at the heart of life 
but the cynical and arrogant individualism which forms the 
negative and evil aspect of the democratic idea. 

The children of the world had lost courage : but for the 
children of light the glory of the new ideal had never faded. 
Hardly affected~by the practical failure of the Revolution, 
freed from the interference of historic outward detail, the 
intellectual and spiritual conception of the young democracy 
shone clear in the cloudless heaven, for whosoever should 
behold. 



XX PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

The man to behold it was Shelley. His soul, pure as 
crystal, clear as flame, held and fused the vital elements both 
of strength and weakness in the democratic ideal. At the 
close of the second decade of our century he conceived the 
Prometheus Unbound. 

The drama is in truth the perfect symbolic reflection of 
the conceptions of the new democracy, alike in their 
strength and in their weakness. We shall find it vague 
where the Revolution was vague, crude where the Revolution 
was crude, — that is, in its intellectual philosophy ; we shall 
find it great where the revolution was great, — that is, in its 
spiritual ideal. 

We see how completely the poem expresses the limita- 
tions as well as the power inherent in the new democratic 
conception when we recall, briefly, Shelley's faith and atti- 
tude. Shelley is democrat and communist. His convictions 
are frankly, eagerly anarchical. The ruling passion of his 
life is the passion for liberty, and liberty to him, as to most 
thinkers of the time, means the absence of law. He hates 
authority with a deadly hatred ; it is by the overthrow of all 
government, civil or religious, that he expects the happiness 
of humanity to be attained. This destructive political con- 
ception is a simple reproduction of current ideas, or at least 
of the ideas of '93. On the ethical side, Shelley's thought 
was formed by two amusingly different influences, by Wil- 
liam Godwin, his father-in-law, and by Plato. The result 
of this curious union was paradoxical enough. With all his 
conscious intellect, Shelley clings to the views of Political 
Justice, a book written by Godwin which expresses the 
coldest radicalism of revolutionary thought ; but with every 
higher instinct, he springs to greet the mystic idealism of 



INTR OD UC TION. xxi 

Plato. The crudest and most unimaginative parts of the 
Prometheus Unbound reflect the cheap doctrinaire philoso- 
phy of Godwin, — a philosophy held in Shelley's mind, 
but never in his soul. The easy optimism of Godwin, and 
of all revolutionary thinkers, is the phase of their thought 
most congenial to Shelley. To the Revolution evil is a pure 
accident, an external fact. It inheres in institutions, — how 
it got there we are never told, — and when these institutions 
shall be shattered, the nature of man, pure, virtuous, loving, 
will instantly restore the Age of Gold. This conception 
determines the whole form of the myth in the Prometheus 
Unbound. Shallow though it seems to-day, it served a 
necessary purpose. It roused men from the lethargy of 
despair, and inspired them with faith in man's control over 
his own destiny. Like the apostolic expectation of the 
immediate coming of the Lord, the pathetic revolutionary 
optimism gave courage to an infant faith, and made men 
loyal to their ideals until the time should come when they 
could stand alone. It enabled them, in Shelley's words, 

" To hope, till hope creates, 
From its own wreck, the thing it contemplates." 

There is another point in which Shelley's attitude is one 
with that of his time : his scornful rejection of Christianity. 
No one can read history without seeing that it was very 
difficult, in those days, to be both a democrat and a Chris- 
tian. The Church had identified itself, in the Revolution, 
with the aristocrats. It had chosen to side with established 
evil rather than with reform which disturbed peace. It had 
its reward. No one familiar with the respectable worldliness 
of the recognized religion of England during the first of our 



XX 11 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

century can wonder that many of the most vivid and relig- 
ious minds of the day revolted from Christianity. Shelley, 
with characteristic vehemence, revolted to the very extreme. 
But Shelley does not only reflect the intellectual attitude 
of the Revolution : he is also, and more completely, an ex- 
ponent of its spiritual passion. So far as we have yet gone, 
we might have taken Byron as well as Shelley for our typical 
poet. Byron, too, had the frank antinomianism, the hatred 
of Christianity, found in the Revolution, though he lacked its 
buoyant optimism. But Byron was untouched by the higher 
elements of democratic thought, which exalt the poetry of 
Shelley. Through the Prometheus Unbound breathes the 
very spirit of the religion of humanity, the passionate sym- 
pathy for suffering, the passionate love of man. The power 
to conceive vast abstract ideals and to render them dynamic 
in human life was a gift of the Revolution, in reaction from 
the age of common sense ; and this gift created the drama. 
Nor were there lacking in Shelley's poetry or in his life 
elements of a yet more spiritual worship. Like the great Jew 
Spinoza, he might be described as God-intoxicated. His 
reason might deny, but his imagination believed ; and the 
imagination was the very centre of Shelley's nature. We 
may not perhaps follow Mr. Browning in his interesting 
suggestion that had Shelley lived he would have become a 
Christian ; but we may, we must, remember the extreme 
youth of the poet when he died, and if we would be just, 
seek for his faith, not in the verse of crude reaction and 
boyish polemic, but in the expression of his moments of 
highest insight. Not by Queen Mab but by Epipsychi- 
dion and Adonais may we learn the soul of Shelley. His 
soul cannot be labelled ; it is too bright and swift and strange 



INTR OD UC TION. xxii i 

for that. But if some name is to suggest the order of nature 
to which Shelley belonged, that of Pantheist is the best. 
His thought, conditioned here as always by the limits of his 
time, lacks completely that reverence for the sacredness of 
personality which is the noblest achievement of the century's 
later years. Ignoring personality in man, it is no wonder 
that Shelley ignores it in God also. But the revolutionary 
movement was at heart a spiritual uprising. It marked the 
rebellion of the human soul from that mass of custom which, 
in a materialized society, lay upon it 

" with a weight 
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life." 

The new passion for nature as the revelation of a Divine 
Spirit, the new faith in love as the law of life, made a relig- 
ion far more real than either the deism or the dogmatic 
orthodoxy of the eighteenth century. This was the religion 
of Shelley. From all materialism, conscious or unconscious, 
his soul was severed by a severance sharp as that between 
death and life. He sees, in nature, in the human soul, the 
" One Spirit's plastic stress " ; and to attain perfect union 
with the Soul of All is his supreme desire. He worships, 
though he worships he knows not what. 

" Within a cavern of man's trackless spirit 
Is framed an Image so intensely fair, 
That the adventurous thought that wander near it 
Worship, and as they kneel tremble, and wear 
The splendour of its Presence, and the light 
Penetrates their dreamlike frame 
Till they become charged with the strength of flame." 

It is this " strength of flame " which has passed into the 
verse of Shelley. 



XXIV PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

Such was the nature of the man who was to be the su- 
preme exponent of the ideal of the new democracy. The 
crude intellectual conceptions of the Revolution enter the 
Prometheus Unbound and weaken it ; the spiritual sensi- 
tiveness and spiritual faith of the Revolution enter it more 
vitally, and mould it to an organic whole. The drama is 
thus singularly uneven. It forfeits at times all imaginative 
power ; yet wherever this power diminishes, its historic sug- 
gestiveness may be said to increase. By virtue in part of its 
very imperfections, by virtue supremely of the love for hu- 
manity, the passion for freedom and the triumphant spirit- 
uality which suffuse it, it is the perfect artistic reflection of 
all that was most significant in the early aspects of the faith 
which has shaped our modern world. 

Fitting it is and beautiful that to Shelley, of all the hie- 
rarchy of poets then living, should have been given the mis- 
sion of perfectly reflecting the dawn of the new cosmic day. 
Fair in undying youth, his figure stands before us, its bright 
and ardent purity undimmed by the breath of years. Fate 
seems at first bitter and cruel when, in his thirtieth year, 
the Italian waters which he loved so well close over his 
frail bark, and the poet- soul is borne darkly, fearfully, afar 
into an unknown land. Yet, though he sings no longer for 
the sons of time, he rests, like his own Adonais, " in those 
abodes where the Eternal are." Shelley's abrupt and early 
death is, we may almost say, the inevitable conclusion of a 
life whose work it was to render for us the eager thought, the 
ardent faith, of adolescence. The sober and practical tem- 
per of middle life, the meditative calm of age, were never to 
touch his buoyant spirit. He heralded the sunrise ; and his 
task was over when he had sung his hymn of welcome. 



INTR OD UC TION. XXV 

We have said that the Prometheus Unbound is a myth ; 
and so it is. Yet its type is widely different from that of 
the great stories of the elder world. In our modern days 
we cannot expect, we could assuredly not desire, the per- 
fect reproduction of an ancient poem. The Prometheus 
Unbound is both greater and less than the early dreams 
of Hellas. In some ways it is less. Inspired as a rule by 
spontaneous insight, it is yet beset now and again by a 
clogging self-consciousness, and the poetry sinks into alle- 
gory, or, lower yet, into versified didacticism. Moreover, 
the drama tantalizes us with an occasional vagueness and 
inconsistency foreign to the ancient myth. Yet if in these 
ways it is inferior, in others it is instinct with a deeper 
power. The past can never be relived. The Prometheus 
is truly a poem of youth, but the youth which inspires it is 
not that of the first childhood of the race. The world was, 
indeed, born anew in those great years at the first of the 
century ; but this its new birth was the birth of the Spirit. 
The free naturalism, strong, simple, and buoyant, that 
breathes through the myths of Greece was fled forever. 
The rapture of physical existence is replaced in all our later 
poetry by the rapture of a spiritual hope. Grave, with all its 
joyous melody, is the music of the Prometheus ; the pain 
that sounds through the drama has a deeper note than the 
wistful grief of the child ; in the eyes of Prometheus and Asia 
is seen the shadow of a suffering world. The ideal towards 
which the drama presses is far different from the temperate 
uprightness of the Greeks ; it is no less than absolute union 
with the spirit of Divine Love. For the time when the Pro- 
metheus Unbound is written is the nineteenth Christian cen- 
tury, and the vision of holiness has been beheld by the world. 



XXVI PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

The century has grown old since Shelley wrote. The 
characteristic utterance of its central and final years has 
been that of men. A Rabbi Ben Ezra reviews life in mem- 
ory, as a Prometheus looked forward to life in hope. Brown- 
ing and Tennyson have reverted to that virile realism which 
is the most instinctive expression of our English genius ; 
and this realism tends to express itself in practical rather 
than in aesthetic forms. That ideal which flashed upon 
men of old as a vision, we struggle as a fact to fulfil. For 
them were the hours of insight ; for us are the hours of 
gloom. 

" With aching hands and bleeding feet 
We dig and heap, pile stone on stone; 
We bear the burden and the heat 
Of the long day, and wish 'twere done." 

While we wait for the " hours of light " to return, it is well 
for us always to remember that what we are striving to 
realize already exists as a vision. The dream-images of 
superhuman beauty, the ardent abstract enthusiasm, which 
we find in Shelley, are in truth the sources and inspiration 
of that stern democracy which, often in painful forms, 
struggles towards a future that we can still but dimly see. 
The economic science of to-day and the imaginative passion 
of the past are in aim and essence one. We can no longer 
console ourselves for unclean tenements by dreams of the 
union of Prometheus and Asia ; but we may, in sober, dusty 
days of discouraged labor, refresh our spirits and revive our 
faith by turning to the glory of the morning, and steeping 
our eyes in the vision of an eternal prime. 



INTR OD UC TION. XXV11 



II. 

A STUDY OF THE MYTH. 

The student who tries to translate the fleeting symbolism 
of the drama into a logical sequence of abstract truths will 
be grievously disappointed. Such a translation is impos- 
sible. The union of soul and form, meaning and expres- 
sion, is too close to be severed. It has to be seized, not by 
the analytical reason, but by an intuition akin to that of the 
poet. We are tempted to describe the myth in Shelley's 
own dazzling words : — 

" Child of light ! thy limbs are burning 

Through the vest which seems to hide them, 

As the radiant lines of morning 

Through thin clouds, ere they divide them; 

And this atmosphere divinest 

Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest." 

To conceal while it reveals is always the characteristic of 
the myth. The drama transports us to the very confines 
of the world of sense, where material semblance trembles 
into spiritual truth ; but the limit is never quite crossed, the 
reticence of the image is never forfeited. " As dew-stars 
glisten, then fade away," gleams of spiritual meaning flash 
and vanish through the poem. The imagination every- 
where suggests what the intellect cannot define. 



XXVlll PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

We must acknowledge another reason for the obscurity of 
many passages in the Prometheus. The drama is uneven 
both in form and thought ; and one is sometimes tempted 
to linger in search of hidden depth of meaning, when true 
wisdom would recognize a passage as impenetrable simply 
because shallow. It is because of this twofold difficulty in 
logical interpretation that many, even among the lovers of 
Shelley, give up the attempt to trace the evolution of any 
theme, and enjoy the drama simply as a succession of shin- 
ing pictures and lovely melodies. Yet in reality the drama 
is a highly organized whole, conceived with the greatest 
care and with elaborate fulness of meaning. We know, on 
Mrs. Shelley's authority, that Shelley wrote every detail of 
the poem with distinct intention. His sensitive soul was 
attuned not only to harmonies of light and color, but to the 
severer music of the experiences of life. Such a nature is 
no pioneer in constructive ideas. We do not look in Shelley 
for the virile intellectuality, the grasp on practical problems, 
of Browning ; but we do seek and find that intuitive reflec- 
tion of the vital elements in contemporary life and thought 
which is characteristic of the seer. 

Now, although in many a detail the meaning of the myth 
eludes us, in grand outlines it may be traced. Without try- 
ing to translate the poem into a series of moral maxims, 
it is quite possible to apprehend something of the broader 
relations which its imagery bears to the facts of human life. 
Such an apprehension is essential to the best enjoyment of 
the drama. 

Shelley takes as his starting-point the old story of Prome- 
theus, as found in the drama of ^Eschylus. Prometheus the 
Titan has stolen fire from heaven to benefit the race of man. 



INTR OD UC TION. xxix 



In punishment Jupiter nails him high on a cliff of Caucasus, 
where he hangs, suffering tortures untold. He possesses a 
secret which, if revealed, will ward off from Jupiter some un- 
known and terrible danger ; with this secret he refuses to 
part. These broad and simple facts Shelley adopts from the 
old Greek myth ; then, with an audacious license born of 
the Revolution, he modifies, enlarges, innovates, to suit his 
own desires, till the glowing and complex phantasmagoria 
of his drama bears likeness slight indeed to the grave and 
simple austerity of the ^Eschylean treatment. 

When the drama opens, Prometheus, great protagonist of 
humanity, hangs on his mount of torture, high above the 
outspread world. But he is not alone. Sister-spirits, lone 
and Panthea — fair forms with drooping wings — sit watch- 
ful at his feet. They may be with him : another presence, 
dearer than theirs, is denied. Asia, their great sister, the 
beloved of Prometheus, awaits afar in sorrow • and the 
bitterest element in the suffering of the Titan is the separa- 
tion decreed between himself and her. 

This first act may be entitled "The Torture of Prome- 
theus." The agony which Jupiter has power to inflict shall 
reach its bitter climax here. Prometheus, disciplined by 
830HS of silent pain, has attained a new point of develop- 
ment. After a grand opening soliloquy, he utters a petition. 
At the moment of his capture he has hurled defiance at 
Jupiter, his foe, in a terrific curse. This curse he would now 
recall. Hatred has left his soul ; even the words of wrath 
and contempt he has forgotten. Let them be repeated, 
that he may revoke them and thus remain free from the 
taint of revenge. But it is in vain that he entreats all powers 
of earth and air to repeat the curse to him. They remember 



XXX PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

it well ; repeat it they dare not ; till at last, from a strange 
underworld of shadows, the Phantasm of Jupiter appears, 
proud and calm, and pronounces the dread words. Prome- 
theus in pity recalls them. Jupiter, from Olympus, cognizant 
doubtless of all that passes on the Mount, and thinking the 
revocation to betoken relenting on the part of Prometheus, 
sends Mercury swiftly down to extort the longed-for secret, 
and to inflict new pains if the Titan prove rebellious. Him 
Prometheus repulses with words of lofty scorn and invulner- 
able will. Forgiveness has implied no weakening of his firm 
integrity. Then comes the great scene of torture. Throngs 
of Furies — awful Forms of Darkness — surge upward from 
the abyss. They press around Prometheus, a stifling, evil 
crowd ; they taunt him, they revile, they torment. Every 
spiritual agony that the soul can know do they inflict upon 
him. Yet though his soul is sorrowful unto death, it is not 
conquered. To the temptation of despair he does not yield, 
if despair mean the loss of inward loyalty to truth and right ; 
and the baffled Furies vanish in rage. Then gather to con- 
sole the weary Titan a troop of exquisite spirits. Their gen- 
tle songs soothe though they cannot cheer the exhausted soul 
of the sufferer. He hangs, weary, yet at peace ; the morn- 
ing slowly dawns ; and we leave him as his wistful thoughts 
turn towards Asia and towards Love. 

If the first act is " The Torture of Prometheus," the 
second may be called "The Journey of Asia." It is around 
her figure that action now centres. In the beginning of the 
act we find her waiting in an Indian vale, whose luxuriant 
beauty contrasts strangely with the bleak ravine where Pro- 
metheus suffers. Yet Asia, too, is sorrowful, though her sor- 
row is passive. Separated from Prometheus, she languidly 



INTRODUCTION. xxxi 

waits and dreams. She is to learn that her mission is not 
only to endure but to act, and through action to save the 
world. 

The moment is sunrise. Panthea comes, with messages 
from Prometheus. Panthea, as our detailed study will show 
us, is the Spirit of Intuition, or Faith, which ever mediates 
between the soul of man and its ideal. She has strange 
dreams to narrate — dreams of mystic meaning that summon 
to an action unknown. In the eyes of Panthea, Asia be- 
holds these dreams. The first is the Vision of Fulfilment, — 
Prometheus joyous and free. The second is the Dream of 
Progress ; and as Asia beholds it, the impulses of her own 
brooding heart become clear to her. The cliffs around 
become vocal with echoes that call on her to go forth. She 
must hence, she knows not whither. Nature, which has 
been but the passive reflection of her beauty, becomes 
charged with spiritual significance. It stings with hunger 
for full light, it murmurs a message half-understood of a 
task that awaits, a reward to be won. We are here, in 
the drama of spiritual evolution, at the great point of the 
awakening of consciousness. Driven by an imperious in- 
ward stress, Asia seizes the hand of Panthea, and with her 
starts on a strange journey. Through the dark forest of 
human experience they wander, — bound, though they know 
it not, on a pilgrimage of redemption. They pause on a 
mountain summit, and, abandoning self-guidance, yield in 
meekness to radiant spirit-forces not their own. Into the 
secret abysses of Being they are carried, to the presence of 
the awful Demogorgon, the unseen Fate that dwells in dark- 
ness. This descent of Asia to the cave of Demogorgon 
recalls the descent of Faust to the " Mothers " — the hidden 



XXX11 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

roots of things — in the second part of Faust ; it recalls 
yet more forcibly that fairest myth of the ancient world, the 
descent of Psyche to the shades of Avernus. 

In the presence of this oracular Darkness, which is yet a 
Living Spirit, Asia seeks satisfaction in her perplexed brood- 
ings over life and evil, and finally questions the fate of Pro- 
metheus and herself. The answers come in deed, not word. 
Swiftly appears a vision of the Cars of the Hours ; swiftly 
the awful Form of Demogorgon floats upward to the car of 
darkness, while Asia and Panthea, transported to a shining 
chariot, are whirled more swiftly than the lightning to a mys- 
tic mount. Then comes the great consummation of the 
drama. Asia is transfigured before us. Her being glows 
with a strange radiance, so intense that it hides her from the 
view. A Voice — the Voice of Prometheus — is heard chant- 
ing to her a worshipful lyric, the highest expression alike of 
Shelley's genius and of his faith ; and with her responsive 
song, of almost equal beauty, and of profound meaning, the 
act concludes. 

The apotheosis of Asia is the climax of the spiritual 
drama. But in the third act we witness the Fall of Jupiter 
and the Liberation of Prometheus. Jupiter has just married 
Thetis. The child of this union ( here is the secret which 
Prometheus has so persistently withheld ) is to destroy his 
father. Strange child ! For in truth he is no other than 
an incarnation of Demogorgon. In a horror of great dark- 
ness he ascends to the resplendent throne of the world's 
ruler and pronounces doom. Scorn avails nothing, the 
weapons of the gods are futile, futile thunderbolts and 
prayers. The curse is fulfilled. From high heaven Jupiter 
falls into the abyss, — 



INTRODUCTION. xxxiii 

" And like a cloud his enemy above 
Darkens his fall with victory." 

Hercules releases Prometheus, who, reunited to Asia, 
enters upon an existence of limitless freedom and perfect 
love. The Spirit of the Hour speeds, proclaiming redemp- 
tion over land and sea ; and with a long passage describing 
the joyful effects of his tidings the act concludes. The 
fourth act was an afterthought which we could ill afford to 
miss. It is a triumphal chorus of rejoicing. All powers of 
earth and air, of the natural and the spiritual world, unite in 
a wondrous paean that for depth and variety of music, for 
beauty of imagery, for the expression of rapturous gladness, 
finds no parallel in English verse. It is to music rather than 
to literature that we must look for the analogues of poetry 
such as this. 

Here, then, in broad outline, is the story of the Prome- 
theus Unbound. Many details it has which we have not 
mentioned, but these will fall into place in the study of the 
drama itself. What, now, is its meaning? Is it anything 
more than a panorama of glowing forms and a sequence of 
wondrous melodies ? And if so, what ? 

It is a drama of the redemption of humanity ; and the 
need and method of redemption are conceived as they could 
be conceived under the influence of the new democratic 
faith alone. 

Prometheus is the representative of all humanity. He 
suffers, oppressed by the tyranny of Jupiter ; yet it is from 
Prometheus himself — and in this Shelley follows the Greek 
myth — that all the power of Jupiter is derived. We must 
be careful not to consider Jupiter as the abstract power of 
moral evil. To Shelley his significance is mainly, perhaps. 



xxxiv PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

political. A few lines near the conclusion of the drama 
give the clew to him : — 

"Those foul shapes, abhorred by god and man, 
Which, under many a name and many a form, 
Strange, savage, ghastly, dark, and execrable, 
Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world." 

He stands for all those institutions, civil and religious, which 
were once the true expression of the will of man, but which, 
as the centuries have passed, become effete forms, still 
powerful to bind, and with an innate tendency to repress 
progress. "Thrones, altars, judgment-seats, and prisons," — 
these, in one grand composite, comprising as they do all 
the forms by which man has projected into the world the 
authority of Law, unite in the idea of Jupiter. But while 
Jupiter has thus rather an historic and outward than an 
ethical and inward meaning, we must not forget that he 
practically represents all the evil recognized by the poet ; 
for "Shelley believed," so Mrs. Shelley tells us, "that man- 
kind had only to will that there should be no evil and there 
would be none." Evil is an accident of the outer life, 
and thus, naturally enough, inheres exclusively in that out- 
ward authority which checks the free play of impulse. 
The evil Jupiter, thus conceived, is a shadowy creature 
enough. Almost may we say that he has no real existence, 
and accordingly throughout the drama he never possesses 
the imagination. It is by his own weight that he falls. 
He is made, in the first act, to pronounce his own curse, 
and his destruction is wrought by his offspring. In the 
marriage of Jupiter and Thetis, Shelley seems to portray 
the overweening arrogance and vfipis through which a polit- 
ical tyranny invests itself with the pomp of false glory, 



INTRODUCTION. XXXV 

and which always precedes its overthrow. The form of 
Demogorgon assumed by the child of this fateful union is 
the most difficult in the whole drama to apprehend, but we 
can see one or two simple thoughts for which he stands. 
In his aspect as child of Jupiter and Thetis, Demogorgon 
undoubtedly means Revolution ; that revolution which al- 
ways follows the marriage of unrighteous power to over- 
weening display. Viewed from the intellectual side of the 
historical sequence here suggested, Demogorgon stands for 
the critical and destructive thought of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, which, nurtured under a false and artificial civilization, 
was the revolutionary force by which that civilization was 
overthrown. Thus we are led to the deeper aspects of the 
strange conception, — a conception which we can neither de- 
fine nor understand, because Shelley doubtless meant Dem- 
ogorgon to represent that background of inscrutable mystery 
in existence which is at once the source and negation of all 
our knowledge. We may call him Fate, if we will ; yet there 
is another fate behind him. We may call him Wisdom, yet 
there is much which he seemingly does not know. He has 
been compared to the Hegelian Absolute, that " Union of 
Contradictories " which is nothing and yet all. The most 
useful way to think of him is as the Principle of Reason ; 
Reason not indeed omniscient, but the best instrument man 
possesses for the approach to absolute truth. Lying deep in 
the unconscious life of humanity, this Reason is passionless 
and passive ; yet now and again it will be roused, it will 
arise, and, appearing in time under the aspect of some relent- 
less phase of thought, will sweep down the old and sink once 
more into silence. Most interesting is the way in which this 
action of Demogorgon is brought about by Shelley. The 



XXX vi PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

v 

obvious cause is the overweening arrogance of Jupiter ; but 
another more potent cause lies deep in the secret mysteries 
of being. For in the abode of darkness, Asia, Spirit of 
Divine Love, has met Demogorgon. Face to face she has 
spoken with him ; and it is only after this interview that the 
" mighty shadow " floats upward from his throne. Surely 
the poet here means to image to us the profound truth, that 
it is only through contact with emotion that abstract thought 
can become roused to action and appear in the sphere of 
practical life, a vital and dynamic power. We have here a 
clear suggestion of that revolutionary process by which the 
frigid and inert reasoning of Voltaire and his kin, becoming 
charged with passion, overthrew the ancient world. 

Thus the self-destruction of evil is accomplished, and on 
the negative side the process of redemption is complete : 
but in the evolution of the myth there is another and positive 
aspect of far greater beauty. The uplift of humanity is 
achieved not only through the overthrow of evil but through 
the active force of good. Ndt directly through the action of 
Prometheus. True to his doctrine of non-resistance, Shelley 
allows his Titan to play no part in his own salvation, unless 
by the patient and heroic endurance of his pain. Through 
Asia, the spirit of celestial love, shall redemption be worked 
out : Asia, the Light of Life, highest embodiment in Shelley's 
poetry of that Ideal towards which his worship ever ascends. 

The second act, in which the myth of Asia is unfolded, 
is poetically the most wonderful in the Prometheus Un- 
bound, — that is to say, in the whole cycle of English song. 
The verse palpitates with spiritual meaning, profound yet 
elusive. It dazzles us like the sky at sunrise, yet like the 
sky at sunrise purges our eyes to clearer sight. It is a myth 



INTR OD UCTION. xxxvii 

of spiritual evolution, dealing with the moment when Love, 
hitherto content to dream and suffer, is aroused to action 
and to thought. We have already spoken of the long 
journey to which the sister-spirits, Love and Faith, are 
driven by their dreams and by the voices of nature. At 
last, as we saw, they are drawn downward into the abysses 
of being. Asia stands before Demogorgon ; Love questions 
Ancient Wisdom. She asks a solution of the problems of 
existence, — asks and is answered. The response does but 
corroborate the yearning intuition of her own heart. Love 
is supreme, Love is eternal ! This is the deepest word the 
human reason deigns to speak. And it is enough. Demo- 
gorgon, as we saw, is roused to activity by his meeting with 
Asia. To Asia, also, the interview is a crisis. If reason must 
be charged with passion before it can prevail, love on the 
other hand must become instinct with wisdom before it can 
be made manifest in that glory which shall save the world. 
Yet this new wisdom does but reiterate the primal instinct of 
Love. Tennyson's In Memoriam is the typical .poem of the 
middle of the century, as Shelley's Prometheus Unbound of 
its earlier years. And the central message of both poems 
is the same. Love Immortal is sung by both alike ; Love 
discerned immortal first by the yearning of the eager heart, 
proved immortal only by wearisome journey of thought 
through the dark and lonely regions of soul-experience. 
After her interview with Demogorgon, the power of Asia is 
set free. Love is transfigured. Its rosy warmth pervades 
the whole creation, and its power is revealed triumphantly 
supreme. This is the act through which, in the secret 
mystery of creation, the redemption of Prometheus is 
achieved. Thus through a double process, destructive and 



XXXVlll PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

constructive, — by revolution and by love, — is set free the 
human soul. At this point, the Prometheus Unbound ceases 
to be great. When redemption is achieved, when the 
drama turns from hope and endurance, and endeavors to 
picture fulfilment, the poem drops into bathos. Weak, sen- 
timental, empty, — guilty of that worst of aesthetic sins, pretti- 
ness, — is Shelley's description of the ideal state. After their 
titanic throes, their radiant achievement, Prometheus and 
Asia are united. Surely the progressive rapture of their life 
will at least in glorious hint form the conclusion of the drama. 
Not so. They retire to a certain cave ; there, like Arca- 
dian shepherd and shepherdess, they live their passive days, 
listening to the echoes of the human world and finding 
supreme joy in the development of the arts. For a regen- 
erate humanity, Shelley had no message. His ideal is 
radically unprogressive, — the return to a Golden Age of 
pastoral innocence, rather than the advance into new regions 
of material and spiritual conquest. " Equal, unclassed, tribe- 
less and nationless, exempt from awe, worship, degree," is the 
humanity of the future ; and the poetry is flat, the thought 
is even flatter, in which its life is described. 

In part, this descent into bathos is inevitable. All at- 
tempts to describe an unknown millennium must needs be 
futile ; even the Apocalypse deals only in guarded and rev- 
erent symbol, and all uninspired books, from Plato to 
"News from Nowhere," fail to attract us from our present 
miseries to their insipid ideal. Yet Shelley's presentation 
has a peculiar weakness. It is the weakness inherent in the 
whole Revolutionary ideal, and may be summed up in two 
defects. We have hinted at both of them before. The first 
defect is the entire absence in the Prometheus Unbound 



INTR OD UC TION. xxxix 

of the modern scientific conception of Law and Evolution ; 
the second is the vagueness of the religious ideas of the 
poem. The idea of progressive development was unknown 
to the men of the Revolution. In their thought, salvation 
was to be reached by a sudden overthrow of tyrants rather 
than by a slow and constructive upbuilding. The ideal state, 
when reached, was to be one of stagnant and empty enjoy- 
ment, rather than one of continual advance through struggle. 
All development is conditioned by law, and the thought of 
law is abhorrent to them. The invertebrate society de- 
scribed in the third act of the Prometheus Unbound is 
the inevitable outcome of a state of pure anarchy ; and 
anarchy as an ideal ought to have been made impossible for 
us to-day by the teachings of modern science. Yet what 
we miss in the Prometheus Unbound is deeper even than 
the sense of the sacredness of law or the grandeur of devel- 
opment. We feel the lack of any definiteness in the religious 
thought of the poem. The interpretation of evil is hope- 
lessly superficial ; not only does it ignore the scientific 
aspect of evil as imperfect development, but also the far 
deeper and truer aspect of evil as Sin. To represent out- 
ward authority as the only force that hampers the free purity of 
man, is simply to be false to fact. The absence, in the drama, 
of any outlook towards immortality or any suggestion of 
the Divine Fatherhood is the final source of its weakness. 
Shut off from any hope of endless growth towards an infinite 
perfection in the hereafter, shut in upon himself with no per- 
sonal ideal towards which he can strive, nor spiritual strength 
on which he can depend, it is no wonder that man, as Shel- 
ley depicts him, is a creature of no personality, scarcely 
higher, except for his aesthetic instincts, than an amiable brute. 



xl PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

Thus the crudity of the Prometheus Unbound is the 
crudity of the Revolution : its strength also is largely the 
strength of the Revolution. When we look upon the drama 
as a whole, the surface inconsistencies, the deeper errors, 
vanish from our thoughts, and leave a work of resplendent 
insight. The weakness is of the intellect ; the strength is 
of the spirit. 

The controlling inspiration of Shelley's verse is the great 
passion of his day. Far above its crude convictions soared 
the clear faith of the new democratic ideal. The elements 
of this faith are eternal. The first is a profound love for 
humanity, a sympathy for all the woes of a suffering world. 
This love, this -sympathy, burn on every page of the Pro- 
metheus Unbound. The next is the passion for freedom ; 
such passion irradiates the drama. Last and greatest note 
of the democratic ideal is the spirit of a deathless hope ; and 
the serene assurance that evil shall be conquered by the 
might of love is the soul of Shelley's poem. Through its 
every line breathes a hope that can neither falter nor repent, 
supreme in torture, triumphant over despair. The verse is 
suffused with the light of it, and gleams with the radiance 
of dawn. The Prometheus Unbound is a poem of the 
sunrise : — 

" The point of one white star is quivering still 
Far in the orange light of widening dawn 
Beyond the purple mountains." 

Attainment in the drama there is none ; of rest it has no 
message. It is a cloud-capped morning vision, with some- 
thing of the elusiveness, the swift transitions, the shining 
mystery of the cloud. As such, we must receive it. The 
age was one of promise, not of achievement, and we wrong 



INTR OD UCTION. xli 

its greatest poem when we search it for something which 
the age could not bestow. The Prometheus Unbound 
is the Drama of Hope. The time has not come yet — it 
may come in some far-distant day — when a new Shelley 
shall write for a rejoicing world the Drama of Fulfilment. 



xlii PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



III. 

THE DRAMA AS A WORK OF ART. 

It is a thankless task to "unweave a rainbow." The 
iridescent beauty of Shelley's poems stimulates the spirit of 
joy rather than that of analysis. The historic position and 
inner significance of a poem may be made clearer by com- 
ment, but its charm as a work of art vanishes on close in- 
spection, as the lights in a dew-drop die away under the 
microscope. The exquisite lines of Blake are peculiarly 
true of the appreciation of poetry : — 

" He who bends to himself a joy 
Shall the winged life destroy, 
But he who kisses the joy as it flies 
Lives in eternity's sunrise." 

Thus the suggestions which it seems wise to make 
concerning the artistic power of the Prometheus Unbound 
will seek, not to guide analysis, but to quicken receptivity. 
A poet's achievement is always largely determined by his 
temperament. This, true of all poets, is especially true of 
Shelley. As we have seen, he is a pure idealist. The chief 
notes of his temperament are two : an intense sensitiveness 
and a passion for change. The nature of Shelley, like that 
of Browning's St. John, 

" Shudderingly, scarce a shred between, 
Lies bare to the universal prick of light." 



INTR OD UC TION. xl iii 

Not only " music and moonlight and feeling," but color, 
odor, form — yes, pain and pleasure — were one to Shelley. 
He describes his own dominant mood in the words of the 
little Spirit of the Earth : — 

" It was, as it still is, the pain of bliss, 
To move, to breathe, to be." 

This poignant sensitiveness leads him to a marvellous 
fineness of perception ; but his passion for change deter- 
mines the sphere within which his perception shall act. 
Keats is as responsive as Shelley to subtle sense-impressions ; 
Wordsworth's eye and ear had a fairy fineness. But Words- 
worth and Keats alike, though from different reasons — 
Wordsworth from spiritual instinct, Keats from aesthetic 
instinct — reflected most readily moods of repose. The 
themes which both love to render are themes of peace. 
Shelley's spirit is of a different order. He is possessed by 
the vision of such elusive loveliness as vanishes for most of 
us even before it is beheld. He is the poet of motion, of 
half-tints and passing moods ; his glancing restlessness ren- 
ders him interpreter of all that is fugitive in nature and the 
mind of man. 

All Shelley's poetry is subtly pervaded by his personality : 
but nowhere else do we find so perfect an expression of his 
nature as in the Prometheus Unbound. His idealism, his 
sensitiveness, his tremulous restlessness, are in every line. 
To the heaven of Shelley's mind the drama is like 

" The sea, in storm or calm, 
Heaven's ever-changing shadow, spread below." 

It has a dream-like beauty, due in part to the pervading 
sense of spiritual realities thinly concealed, in part to the 



xliv PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

wonderful delicacy with which it suggests rather than ren- 
ders the most fugitive aspects of nature and of feeling. 

But the Prometheus Unbound is more than a reflec- 
tion of Shelley's temperament ; it reveals his highest power, 
a power which otherwise we might never have known him 
to possess. The drama is no mere succession of exquisite 
details ; it has a noble and organic unity. Matthew Arnold 
tells us that a " high architectonic faculty " must always 
accompany complete poetic development. Ruskin calls 
this faculty the Imagination Associative ; call it what we 
will, it is the power which unites many imperfect parts into 
a perfect whole. It presides, Arnold says, at the evolution 
of works like the Agamemnon or the Antigone. Com- 
paratively simple in manifestation through the tragic drama 
of the Greeks, it finds fullest expression in the complex yet 
organic construction of the Shakespearean drama. In the 
majority of Shelley's poems, devoid as they are of all dra- 
matic elements, there is perhaps no place for this power. 
His minor lyrics are but a single strain, though sometimes, 
as in the Ode to the West Wind, the varied development 
of the emotional theme through a noble sequence of stanzas 
gives to the poem an inward harmony which suggests high 
constructive instinct. The Adonais, again, is finely organ- 
ized, though the articulation of parts is here somewhat 
artificial, owing to the closeness with which the poem follows 
classic models. But in the Prometheus Unbound, Shelley 
finally and completely vindicates his claim to the architec- 
tonic faculty. His is not the Shakespearean power of dra- 
matic construction, dependent on the clash of character 
with event ; neither is it exactly the intellectual power shown 
in a noble development of thought-experience, like Tenny- 



INTR OD UCTION. xlv 

son's in the In Memoriam. Shelley's power is more akin 
to that of the musician ; from a simple melodic theme 
he evolves a vast whole of ordered harmony. The Pro- 
metheus Unbound is like a symphony or oratorio, where 
the music, exquisite at every point, is modulated with won- 
drous beauty and subtlety into a grandly progressive whole. 
To translate the drama into terms of music is, indeed, a 
fascinating and feasible experiment. The unity of the poem, 
then, since akin to the unity of music, is primarily emo- 
tional ; and surely no emotional theme was ever discovered 
deeper and wider in scope, fuller of varied imaginative 
suggestion, than that of this Drama of Redemption. 

Each act of the Prometheus centres in a distinct phase 
of the one theme. The first- act, expressing the calm of 
proud endurance, breaks towards the middle into an agony 
still passive and at the end sinks into the peace of exhaus- 
tion. The second act is one of hope and promise : if the 
first centres in endurance, this centres in action. The spirit 
of life palpitates through every line. Faint at first, as Asia 
waits in lovely passiveness, it grows more eager, stronger, 
till it culminates in the marvellous lyric which brings us close 
to Goethe's Werdelust — the creative rapture of the soul 
of the world. The third act is the calm of fulfilment, as the 
first was the calm of endurance. In the fourth act, a lyrical 
afterthought, the full pagan of triumph sweeps us along with 
tumultuous and unequalled harmony. 

Now these moods — enduring expectation, life slowly 
quickened to full activity, fulfilment, and triumph — find 
expression, not alone through the thought of the poem, but 
through its form. They interpenetrate its very structure, 
and mould every line of its verse. The treatment of nature. 



xlvi PROMETHEUS UNBQUND. 

the use made of light and color, the melody, are all deter- 
mined by them ; in studying the drama we must remember 
that it is great not only in parts but as a whole, and that 
each detail, however lovely in itself, gains wonderfully from 
its relation to the emotional tone of the context. 

The treatment of nature reveals Shelley as clearly as any- 
thing in the Prometheus Unbound. In one sense, the 
poem is a nature-drama. The soul of nature is herself one 
of the personages and the scenery is grand and ideal. In Act 
I. we have the wildest of mountain scenery, bleak and bare 
save for the changing beauty of the sky ; in Act II. we find 
ourselves surrounded by the luxuriance of tropical valleys. 
Sky-cleaving peaks, glaciers, lakes, rivers, vast forests, meet 
us on every page. For the most part, the action seems to 
take place on the heights, where the air is pure from taint 
and earth most nearly attains to heaven. The sky-scenery 
above all, with its gloom of gathering storms, its radi- 
ant sunrise, its " flocks of clouds in Spring's delightful 
weather," is as great as can be found in English poetry. 
Here Shelley's passion for change, for fleeting loveliness, 
can find free scope indeed. Yet perhaps we remember less 
the bold outline-work, the suggestion of nature's vaster 
aspects, than the rendering of marvellously delicate detail, 
V>st on a grosser eye or ear : — 

" Winged clouds soar here and there 
Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of." 

"As the bare green hill 
Laughs with a thousand drops of sunny water 
To the unpavilioned sky." 

" As buds grow red when the snowstorms flee." 



INTR OD UC TION. xl vi i 

" And like the vapours when the sun sinks down 
Gathering again in drops upon the pines, 
And tremulous as they, in the deep night 
My being was condensed." 

Shelley's imagination always plays upon exquisitely accu- 
rate perception, yet his treatment of nature springs, not 
from the dull observation of the scientist, but from the 
vision-seeing faculty of the seer. It is a study full of interest 
to see how often some definite scientific conception is seized 
by him, and vitalized and vivified by the dynamic spiritual- 
izing touch of the imagination. The little biography of a 
dew-drop, Act IV. 1. 439, is a charming instance ; another is 
found in a passage, Act IV. 1. 476, where the force of gravi- 
tation is superbly interpreted into emotional terms. 

It is only in the nineteenth century that the poets have 
become great colorists, and Shelley is one of the greatest that 
the century has seen. Only Keats, perhaps, can rival him ; 
and if Keats has more force of color, Shelley has more pur- 
ity. Keats's coloring is opaque, though brilliant, like that of 
a butterfly's wing ; Shelley's is translucent, like an opal. Mr. 
Ruskin tells us that Nature always paints her loveliest hues 
on aqueous or crystalline matter ; and the very law of Nature 
seems to be the instinct of Shelley. Rainbow-lights, keen, 
swift, and pure, play through the Prometheus. The color 
flashes and is gone, elusive as that in a dew-drop. 

But the color in Prometheus Unbound has a higher 
function than to vivify the detail of the poem or to give us a 
series of exquisite vignettes. By the use of light and color 
the great drama is shaped into an organic whole, and the 
architectonic power of Shelley is nobly shown. The har- 
monious progression or evolution of the drama towards a 



xlviii PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

definite goal is symbolically presented through the progress 
of the new cosmic day. The first act opens with night. In 
darkness, lit by the moonbeams of Memory and Hope, the 
Titan, glacier-bound, hangs 

" Upon this wall of eagle-baffling mountain, 
Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured." 

Slowly the " wingless, crawling hours " pass on. With the 
approach of Mercury comes the first promise of the dawn, 
that faint flush of color in the East which may be seen hours 
before sunrise, gathering dim purple and solemn crimson out 
of the very substance of the darkness and the void. The 
delusive promise is not fulfilled. From the East again sweeps 
up the thunder-cloud of the Furies : — 

" Blackening the birth of day with countless wings, 
And hollow underneath, like Death." 

The storm covers the heavens with darkness which, deeper 
than that of midnight, yet shadows forth but faintly the 
darkness of the spirit of Prometheus. Flashes of lightning 
reveal the lurid visions of the world's moments of keen- 
est pain. At last the tempest spends its force, the clouds 
melt away, and the " blue air " holds fresh promise of the 
peace of dawn. The wings of the spirits of consolation fill 
the air with pure cloud-tints : — 

" See how they float 
On their sustaining wings of skyey grain, 
Orange and azure deepening into gold : 
Their soft smiles fill the air like a star's fire." 

The exquisite twilight of dawn enfolds us ; and, with the 
paling of tfie morning star, the act concludes. For the 



1NTR OD UC TION. xl ix 

deepening of the sunrise into its full glory, we must turn to 
the expectant heart of Love. The beginning of the second 
act gives us the fullest blaze of color in the whole poem, 
though the triumph of purest light is to follow later. This 
sunrise-picture seems written in the hues of the sky itself. 
Its greatest marvel lies in its swift transitions, the tremulous 
passage of glory changed to glory even as we behold. Only 
the soul of a Turner could apprehend such a vision, and the 
brush of a Turner could but give us one arrested instant ; 
while Shelley reveals the whole unfolding wondrous passage 
of the morning from promise to radiant fulfilment. 

From this point, the fresh light of morning shines more 
and more clearly through the poem. Once again we feel 
it with peculiar power, where Asia and Panthea, breath- 
ing the pure air of the heights, watch below their feet 
the curling, brilliant, sunlit mists which veil the abode of 
Demogorgon. 

Again for a short space, we descend to the region of 
shadows, and, standing before the throne of Demogorgon, 
perceive 

" A mighty darkness 
Filling the seat of power, and rays of gloom 
Dart round, as light from the meridian sun." 

Then, with abrupt and breathless transition, we are lifted 
to the final Height of Vision, and to the consummation 
of the drama. The apotheosis of Asia gives us the fulness 
of white light, the high noon of the great cosmic day. 
Shelley's mysticism here introduces one or two confusing 
lines ; but his thought evidently is that the physical day has 
yielded to the new spiritual order, and that the rising of the 
material sun is superseded, at least in this great moment, by 



1 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

the rising of the sun of Love. The development of the 
theme of the Day is now dropped, and the light is seemingly 
constant, the implication perhaps being that, in the evolu- 
tion of human destiny, we have reached at last the era of 
unshadowed bliss, which stoops not to evening. 

The supreme aesthetic glory of the Prometheus Un- 
bound is not its nature-descriptions nor its color-treatment, 
but its music. Never did melody so enfold the spirit of a 
poet. The form is transparent and supple as clear flame. 
Blank verse rises into the long, passionate swing of the 
anapaest, or is broken by the flute-like notes of short tro- 
chaic lines, or relieved by the half-lyrical effect of rhymed 
endings. The verse lends itself with equal beauty to the 
grandeur of sustained endurance, to the passionate yearn- 
ing of love, to severe philosophic inquiry, to the ethereal 
notes of spirit-voices dying on the wind. The variety of 
metres is marvellous. Thirty-six distinct verse-forms are 
to be found, besides the blank verse. These forms are 
usually simple ; but at times the versification- scheme is 
as complex as that of the most elaborate odes of Dryden or 
Collins. Yet the artificial and labored beauty of the eigh- 
teenth century verse is replaced in Shelley by song spon- 
taneous as that of his own skylark. The conventions, the 
external barriers of poetry, are completely swept away by the 
new democracy. We may apply to Shelley, and indeed to 
the typical poet of the modern world, the noble line : — 

" His nature is its own divine control." 

The blank verse itself is no monotonous instrument, and the 
range of the poet's power can in no way be better illustrated 
than by the different kinds of music which he is able to draw 



INTR OD UCTION. \[ 

from an instrument technically unchanged. This may be 
seen at once by comparing the opening soliloquy of Prome- 
theus, in Act. I., with that of the opening soliloquy of Asia 
in Act II. The music of these two passages is entirely dif- 
ferent. In the speech of Prometheus, consonant strikes 
hard on consonant, and the vowel-coloring is scant and 
cold. The lines have a sonorous pomp, derived in part 
from their austere majesty of epithet, in part from their 
sternly repressed passion. But into the words of Asia has 
passed something of the soft air and light of the spring-tide 
which she sings. The melody has a prolonged and gentle 
sweetness, which might be languid, were it not for the 
sparkle of delicate life that animates the whole. The same 
distinction of quality may always be felt in the best utter- 
ances of Prometheus and of Asia. Jupiter, again, speaks 
with a proud accent all his own. His monologue has a cer- 
tain metallic ring, a harshness of utterance, quite different 
from the pure, quiet, sad, and strong accent of Prometheus. 
To Demogorgon's speeches Shelley has not, I think, suc- 
ceeded in imparting a distinct cadence. He says little, and 
his few speeches are commonplace as poetry, though at times 
suggestive as thought. Any poet of the third order could 
have written : — 

" Lift thy lightnings not. 

The tyranny of heaven none may retain 

Or reassume or hold, succeeding thee." 

Probably even Shelley found it difficult to impart individual 
accent to the words of a " Mighty Darkness." 

Of all these different types of blank verse, there is one 
most intimately characteristic of Shelley. We find it always 
in the speeches of Asia, sometimes elsewhere. Miltonic 



Hi PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

echoes sound through the words of Prometheus and of 
Jupiter, but there is a cadence of which Shelley alone is 
master, unique in haunting, clinging melody. 

" Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind." 

" With feet unwet, unwearied, undelaying." 

" It is the unpastured sea hungering for calm." 

" See where the child of heaven, with winged feet 
Runs down the slanted sunlight of the dawn." 

In lines like these, Shelley has drawn a new music from 
English words. 

Even the blank verse of Shelley holds a subtle lyrical cry ; 
but it is the sweep and variety of direct lyrical modulation 
which first arrests attention in the Prometheus Unbound. 
There is no rigid distinction in the use of metre, yet the 
major characters of the drama use as a rule the plain 
recitative, while lone, Panthea, and the other chorus-char- 
acters generally sing rather than speak. These chorus- 
characters, or rather chorus-voices, enhance wonderfully the 
imaginative power of the drama. Coming from an unseen 
source, they make themselves heard again and again at 
critical moments. The whole creation, visible and invisible, 
seems thus to share in the great spiritual action of the poem ; 
and the unearthly beauty of these snatches of song thrills 
us with the sense that we are listening to elemental crea- 
tures, too fine for discernment by any grosser sense than that 
of sound. These spirit-voices are first heard in Act I., where 
the Earth-mother, yet unenlightened, bemoans Prometheus's 
retraction of the curse : — 



INTR OD UCTIOlSt. liii 

u Misery, oh misery to me 
That Jove at last should vanquish ye. 
Wail, howl aloud, land and sea. 
The earth's rent heart shall answer ye. 
Mourn, spirits of the living and the dead, 
Your refuge, your defence, lies fallen and vanquished." 

First Echo. 
Lies fallen, and vanquished. 

Second Echo. 

Fallen and vanquished. 

Thus we have the impression of the Powers of Nature, 
ethereal yet unspiritual, unable to apprehend th^. higher atti- 
tude of regenerate man. But the most exquisite instance 
of this fairy-like use of the lyrical interlude is in that first 
scene of the second act, already quoted, where all nature, 
becoming vocal with spirit-voices, sings and whispers its 
quickening message. These tiny lyrics can be compared to 
nothing but the Ariel songs in the Tempest. They have 
the same light trochaic movement, sacred, in Shakespeare 
and Shelley, to fairy suggestion ; they have the same dainty 
and elusive grace. Perhaps the singing of the wind in the 
pine branches and the lovely, inarticulate rise and fall of the 
sounds of nature in a spring morning ring through the songs 
of Shelley's echoes even more perfectly than through those 
of Shakespeare's tricksy sprite. In the last act of the Pro- 
metheus the spirit-voices have it all their own way. Their 
music, from an undertone, has become dominant, and they 
blend with a grander harmony in expressing the rapture of 
a creation redeemed to the freedom of new and perfect 
life. 



liv PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

Shelley's handling of his instrument will become clearer 
if we follow very briefly the consecutive metrical changes in 
the drama. As a rule, the blank verse marks passages of 
transition or of repressed feeling, while at every climax of 
passion the poetry rushes into lyrical form. The first intro- 
duction of the lyric follows the opening soliloquy of Pro- 
metheus. He calls on mountains, springs, the air, the 
whirlwinds, to repeat to him the forgotten curse. They 
respond, and deny, in long lyrical lines ; and, though the 
horror deepens through the images of carnage presented by 
their words, relief is yet afforded, after the stern repression 
of Prometheus, by the free beauty of the movement of the 
verse. The lyric next appears where lone and Panthea, 
whose voices are now heard for the first time, hail the 
approach of the Phantasm of Jupiter. This is the first pas- 
sage in the drama of pure and painless beauty. The curse 
is lyrical, but even, slow, serene in movement. The com- 
ing of Mercury is sung by the sister-spirits in exquisite 
lines. After the long passage, in which the Titan, clad in 
the conscious pride of purity, repels the temptation of the 
fair Spirit of Compromise, the lyric appears again with 
the coming of the Furies. We approach now the climax 
of the horror of the drama. That horror is rendered en- 
durable, and competent to purge us by pity and terror, 
largely through the marvellous beauty of the music through 
which it breathes. As the pain of the whole world presses 
upon the spirit of Prometheus, the music deepens in gran- 
deur and solemnity ; the grievous terror of the visions 
beheld by the Titan is subdued by the weird melody that 
ebbs and flows with the theme. Yet not in lyric but in 
blank verse is reached the climax of the revelation of sor- 



INTR OD UC TION. 1 V 

row, and in blank verse does Prometheus utter his cry 
of supreme anguish. Shelley doubtless here suggests the 
quietness of the deepest horror of life. Not the height 
of lyrical passion but dull recognition of daily experience 
marks the supreme bitterness of the woful problem of hu- 
man destiny. As the pain subsides and the weary but tri- 
umphant Titan sinks into repose, the tension of the song 
relaxes. The coming of the spirits of the human mind is 
heralded in lines which afford exquisite relief by the mere 
introduction of rhyme ; and the lyrics of consolation chanted 
by these spirits have a serene and tender beauty of move- 
ment all their own. 

Of certain portions of the music of the second act we 
have already spoken. " Shelley has here," says Todhunter, 
" made English blank verse the native language of elemental 
genii." The lyrics are more frequent, and blend more with 
structure than in the first act. The whole journey of Asia 
and Panthea is like a great processional, accompanied by a 
chant which now rises, now falls upon the wind. The semi- 
choruses that sing the advance of the sister-spirits have a sub- 
tle mystical meaning \ they have also an imaginative beauty 
of movement like that of Keats's Ode to a Nightingale, 
but with less heavy richness, and a more flute-like tone. 

The longest passage of blank verse in the act is the discus- 
sion between Demogorgon and Asia, which is purely intel- 
lectual. As soon as emotion and action reappear, the verse 
breaks into the Song of the Spirit of the Hour. This ana- 
paestic lyric, interrupted as it is by the end of the scene, and 
ended in Scene V., gives a wonderful impression of haste. 
The fifth scene, the apotheosis of Asia, touches the high- 
water mark of the English lyric. The scene corresponds in 



lvi PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

passion fo the scene with the Furies, in Act I. As that was 
hate this is love, as that was darkness this is light, as that was 
supreme horror so this is supreme rapture. The great Lyric, 
Life of Life, is simple in form, as a ray of white sunlight 
is simple. Asia's response, less well known, is a sequence 
of subtly inwoven harmonies. 

The third act, as we have already said, is attuned to the 
music of peace. But Shelley is less fitted to render this 
music than to sing of desire, or even of endurance. The 
second act is artistically as well as spiritually the finest in 
the drama. Yet the third act has certain passages of tran- 
quil music, music no longer, as in the first act, breathing the 
tense calm of pain and scorn, but inspired with the free 
serenity of joy. Such is the lovely little scene between Apollo 
and Ocean, which is Hellenic in its pure repose. 

The fourth act defies comment. The triumphant paean 
of enfranchised Nature, it is so bewildering in complex 
structure, so intricate in beauty, so remote from all human 
interest, that complete sympathy with it is, perhaps, im- 
possible. Yet the act as a whole marks the most sustained 
effort of English lyrical genius. The music with which it 
opens is light, almost too light, perhaps, as the Hours, past 
and future, and the spirits of the human mind, join in joyful 
choruses of thankful glee. But soon the music deepens and 
widens, and proceeds with an involution of solemn harmony, 
in the grand antiphon of rejoicing between the Spirit of the 
Earth and of the Moon. The music of the earth is grave 
and exultant, that of the moon exquisite in lightness and 
tenderness. The act, and the drama, conclude with an 
organ-roll of harmony, like that of the Ode to the West 
Wind. Demogorgon, the mystic Living Spirit, the Power 



INTR OD UCTION. Ivii 

no longer of Destruction but of Love, solemnly invokes all 
forces of natural and spiritual life to listen to his song ; and 
when, in answering music, they attest their presence, and we 
feel the harmony of the redeemed creation speaking through 
their words, he utters, in cadence grave and serene, his final 
message. It is the message of courage and of hope ; and 
the quiet dignity and seriousness of the lines fitly conclude 
that music which may at times have seemed wild, lawless, 
and fantastic, yet which has always in its most passionate 
abandon yielded allegiance to the law of perfect beauty. 

Thus we see that the poetic power of Shelley, as mani- 
fested in the Prometheus Unbound, is distinct and very 
high. The hold on concrete human life of a Shakespeare 
or a Browning he does not possess ; nor was there granted 
to him the serene insight of Wordsworth nor the philosophic 
method of Tennyson. But his exquisitely equipped temper- 
ament, sensitive in every fibre, enabled him to express those 
finest aspects of nature where visible trembles into invisible,. 
and those finest aspects of emotion where rapture and sor- 
row blend. He has the power to sing melodies which seem 
the echoes of unearthly music, while his imaginative passion 
and spiritual insight reveal to him the solemn vision of 
human destiny, and the redemption that shall be. The 
Ode to the West Wind, written in the same year as the 
Prometheus Unbound, doubtless expresses Shelley's own 
longing for his drama ; and as we realize the power with 
which his message has been uttered, we must feel that the. 
longing has been fulfilled : — 

" Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is. 
What though my leaves are falling like its own? 
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 



lviii PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

" Shall take from both a deep Autumnal tone, 
Sweet, though in sadness; be thou, Spirit fierce, 
My Spirit; be thou me, impetuous one. 

" Drive my dead thoughts over the universe 
Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth, 
And by the incantation of this verse 

" Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth, 
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind; 
Be through my lips to unawakened earth 

"The trumpet of a prophecy. O wind, 
If Winter come, can Spring be far behind? " 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 

A LYRICAL DRAMA 

IN FOUR ACTS 

BY 

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 

"Audisne hcec Amphiarae, sub terram abdite ?" 



PREFACE. 

[By SHELLEY.] 

The Greek tragic writers, in selecting as their subject any portion 
of their national history or mythology, employed in their treatment of 
it a certain arbitrary discretion. They by no means conceived them- 
selves bound to adhere to the common interpretation or to imitate in 
story as in title their rivals and predecessors. Such a system would 
have amounted to a resignation of those claims to preference over their 
competitors which incited the composition. The Agamemnonian story 
was exhibited on the Athenian theatre with as many variations as 
dramas. 

I have presumed to employ a similar licence. The Prometheus 
Unbound of ^Eschylus supposed the reconciliation of Jupiter with his 
victim as the price of the disclosure of the danger threatened to his 
empire by the consummation of his marriage with Thetis. Thetis, ac- 
cording to this view of the subject, was given in marriage to Peleus, and 
Prometheus, by the permission of Jupiter, delivered from his captivity 
by Hercules. Had I framed my story on this model, I should have 
done no more than have attempted to restore the lost drama of /Eschy- 
lus; an ambition, which, if my preference to this mode of treating the 
subject had incited me to cherish, the recollection of the high com- 
parison such an attempt would challenge might well abate. But, in 
truth, I was averse from a catastrophe so feeble as that of reconciling 
the Champion with the Oppressor of mankind. The moral interest of 
the fable, which is so powerfully sustained by the sufferings and endur- 
ance of Prometheus, would be annihilated if we could conceive of him 
as unsaying his high language and quailing before his successful and 
perfidious adversary. The only imaginary being resembling in any 
degree Prometheus, is Satan; and Prometheus is, in my judgement, a 
more poetical character than Satan, because, in addition to courage, 

3 



4 PREFACE. 

and majesty, and firm and patient opposition to omnipotent force, he is 
susceptible of being described as exempt from the taints of ambition, 
envy, revenge, and a desire for personal aggrandisement, which, in the 
Hero of Paradise Lost, interfere with the interest. The character of 
Satan engenders in the mind a pernicious casuistry which leads us to 
weigh his faults and his wrongs, and to excuse the former because the 
latter exceed all measure. In the minds of those who consider that 
magnificent fiction with a religious feeling it engenders something 
worse. But Prometheus is, as it were, the type of the highest perfec- 
tion of moral and intellectual nature, impelled by the purest and the 
truest motives to the best and noblest ends. 

This Poem was chiefly written upon the mountainous ruins of the 
Baths of Caracalla, among the flowery glades, and thickets of odor- 
iferous blossoming trees, which are extended in ever winding labyrinths 
upon its immense platforms and dizzy arches suspended in the air. 
The bright blue sky of Rome, and the effect of the vigorous awakening 
spring in that divinest climate, and the new life with which it drenches 
the spirits even to intoxication, were the inspiration of this drama. 

The imagery which I have employed will be found, in many in- 
stances, to have been drawn from the operations of the human mind, 
or from those external actions by which they are expressed. This is 
unusual in modern poetry, although Dante and Shakspeare are full of 
instances of the same kind : Dante indeed more than any other poet, 
and with greater success. But the Greek poets, as writers to whom no 
resource of awakening the sympathy of their contemporaries Avas un- 
known, were in the habitual use of this power; and it is the study of 
their works, (since a higher merit would probably be denied me,) to 
which I am willing that my readers should impute this singularity. 

One word is due in candour to the degree in which the study of 
contemporary writings may have tinged my composition; for such has 
been a topic of censure with regard to poems far more popular, and 
indeed more deservedly popular, than mine. It is impossible that any 
one who inhabits the same age with such writers as those who stand in 
the foremost ranks of our own, can conscientiously assure himself that 
his language and tone of thought may not have been modified by the 
study of the productions of those extraordinary intellects. It is true, 
that, not the spirit of their genius, but the forms in which it has mani- 



PREFACE. 5 

fested itself, are due less to the peculiarities of their own minds than 
to the peculiarity of the moral and the intellectual condition of the 
minds among which they have been produced. Thus a number of 
writers possess the form, whilst they want the spirit of those whom, it 
is alleged, they imitate; because the former is the endowment of the 
age in which they live, and the latter must be the uncommunicated 
lightning of their own mind. 

The peculiar style of intense and comprehensive imagery which dis- 
tinguishes the modern literature of England, has not been, as a general 
power, the product of the imitation of any particular writer. The mass 
of capabilities remains at every period materially the same; the cir- 
cumstances which awaken it to action perpetually change. If England 
were divided into forty republics, each equal in population and extent 
to Athens, there is no reason to suppose but that, under institutions 
not more perfect than those of Athens, each would produce philoso- 
phers and poets equal to those who (if we except Shakspeare) have 
never been surpassed. We owe the great writers of the golden age 
of our literature to that fervid awakening of the public mind which 
shook to dust the oldest and most oppressive form of the Christian 
religion. We owe Milton to the progress and developement of the same 
spirit : the sacred Milton was, let it ever be remembered, a republican, 
and a bold inquirer into morals and religion. The great writers of our 
own age are, we have reason to suppose, the companions and forerunners 
of some unimagined change in our social condition or the opinions 
which cement it. The cloud of mind is discharging its collected light- 
ning, and the equilibrium between institutions and opinions is now 
restoring, or is about to be restored. 

As to imitation, poetry is a mimetic art. It creates, but it creates 
by combination and representation. Poetical abstractions are beauti- 
ful and new, not because the portions of which they are composed had 
no previous existence in the mind of man or in nature, but because the 
whole produced by their combination has some intelligible and beauti- 
ful analogy with those sources of emotion and thought, and with the 
contemporary condition of them : one great poet is a masterpiece of 
nature which another not only ought to study but must study. He 
might as wisely and as easily determine that his mind should no longer 
be the mirror of all that is lovely in the visible universe, as exclude 



6 PREFACE. 

from his contemplation the beautiful which exists in the writings of a 
great contemporary. The pretence of doing it would be a presumption 
in any but the greatest; the effect, even in him, would be strained, 
unnatural, and ineffectual. A poet is the combined product of such 
internal powers as modify the nature of others; and of such external 
influences as excite and sustain these powers; he is not one, but both. 
Every man's mind is, in this respect, modified by all the objects of Nature 
and art; by every word and every suggestion which he ever admitted 
to act upon his consciousness; it is the mirror upon which all forms 
are reflected, and in which they compose one form. Poets, not other- 
wise than philosophers, painters, sculptors, and musicians, are, in one 
sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age. From 
this subjection the loftiest do not escape. There is a similarity between 
Homer and Hesiod, between /Eschylus and Euripides, between Virgil 
and Horace, between Dante and Petrarch, between Shakspeare and 
Fletcher, between Dryden and Pope; each has a generic resemblance 
under which their specific distinctions are arranged. If this similarity 
be the result of imitation, I am willing to confess that I have imitated. 
Let this opportunity be conceded to me of acknowledging that I 
have, what a Scotch philosopher characteristically terms, " a passion 
for reforming the world : " what passion incited him to write and pub- 
lish his book, he omits to explain. For my part I would rather be 
damned with Plato and Lord Bacon, than go to Heaven with Paley 
and Malthus. But it is a mistake to suppose that I dedicate my poeti- 
cal compositions solely to the direct enforcement of reform, or that I 
consider them in any degree as containing a reasoned system on the 
theory of human life. Didactic poetry is my abhorrence; nothing can 
be equally well expressed in prose that is not tedious and supereroga- 
tory in verse. My purpose has hitherto been simply to familiarize the 
highly refined imagination of the more select classes of poetical readers 
with beautiful idealisms of moral excellence; aware that until the mind 
can love, and admire, and trust, and hope, and endure, reasoned princi- 
ples of moral conduct are seeds cast upon the highway of life which 
the unconscious passenger tramples into dust, although they would 
bear the harvest of his happiness. Should I live to accomplish what I 
purpose, that is, produce a systematical history of what appear to me 
to be the genuine elements of human society, let not the advocates of 



PREFACE. 7 

injustice and superstition flatter themselves that I should take /Eschy- 
lus rather than Plato as my model. 

The having spoken of myself with unaffected freedom will need little 
apology with the candid; and let the uncandid consider that they 
injure me less than their own hearts and minds by misrepresentation. 
Whatever talents a person may possess to amuse and instruct others, be 
they ever so inconsiderable, he is yet bound to exert them: if his 
attempt be ineffectual, let the punishment of an unaccomplished pur- 
pose have been sufficient; let none trouble themselves to heap the dust 
of oblivion upon his efforts; the pile they raise will betray his grave 
which might otherwise have been unknown. 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 



DRAMATIS PERSONS. 



Prometheus. 




Asia, ^ 


Demogorgon. 




Panthea, I Oceanides. 


Jupiter. 




Ione, J 


The Earth. 




The Phantasm of Jupiter. 


Ocean. 




The Spirit of the Earth. 


Apollo. 




The Spirit of the Moon. 


Mercury. 




Spirits of the Hours. 


Hercules. 




Spirits. Echoes. Fauns 
Furies. 




— *K~- 




AC r 


r i. 



Scene, A Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. 
Prometheus is discovered bound to the Precipice. Pan- 
thea and Ione are seated at his Feet. Time, Night. 
During the Scene, Morning slowly breaks. 



Prometheus. 

Monarch of Gods and Daemons, and all Spirits 
But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds 
Which Thou and I alone of living things 
Behold with sleepless eyes ! regard this Earth 

9 



10 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act i. 

Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou 

Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise, 

And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts, 

With fear and self-contempt and barren hope. 

Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate, 

Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn, 10 

O'er mine own misery and thy vain revenge. 

Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours, 

And moments aye divided by keen pangs 

Till they seemed years, torture and solitude, 

Scorn and despair, — these are mine empire. 

More glorious far than that which thou surveyest 

From thine unenvied throne, O, Mighty God ! 

Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame 

Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here 

Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain, 20 

Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured ; without herb, 

Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life. 

Ah me ! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever ! 

No change, no pause, no hope ! Yet I endure. 

I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt? 

I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun, 

Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm, 

Heaven's ever-changing shadow spread below, 

Have its deaf waves not heard my agony? 

Ah me ! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever ! 30 

The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears 
Of their moon-freezing crystals, the bright chains 
Eat with their burning cold into my bones. 
Heaven's winged hound, polluting from thy lips 



act i.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 11 

His beak in poison not his own, tears up 

My heart ; and shapeless sights come wandering by, 

The ghastly people of the realm of dream, 

Mocking me : and the Earthquake-fiends are charged 

To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds 

When the rocks split and close again behind : 40 

While from their loud abysses howling throng 

The genii of the storm, urging the rage 

Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail. 

And yet to me welcome is day and night, 

Whether one breaks the hoar frost of the morn, 

Or, starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs 

The leaden-colored east ; for then they lead 

The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom 

— As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim — 

Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood 50 

From these pale feet, which then might trample thee 

If they disdained not such a prostrate slave. 

Disdain ! Ah no ! I pity thee. What ruin 

Will hunt thee undefended thro' the wide Heaven ! 

How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror, 

Gape like a hell within ! I speak in grief, 

Not exultation, for I hate no more, 

As then ere misery made me wise. The curse 

Once breathed on thee I would recall. Ye Mountains, 

Whose many-voiced Echoes, thro' the mist 60 

Of cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell ! 

Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost, 

Which vibrated to hear me, and then crept 

Shuddering thro' India ! Thou_serenest Air, 

Thro' which the Sun walks burning without beams ! 



12 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act I. 

And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poised wings 

Hung mute and moveless o'er yon hushed abyss, 

As thunder, louder than your own, made rock 

The orbed world ! If then my words had power, 

Though I am changed so that aught evil wish 70 

Is dead within ; although no memory be 

Of what is hate, let them not lose it now ! 

What was that curse ? for ye all heard me speak. 

FlRST VOICE : from the Mountains. 

Thrice three hundred thousand years 
O'er the Earthquake's couch we stood : 

Oft, as men convulsed with fears, 
We trembled in our multitude. 

Second Voice : from the springs. 

Thunder-bolts had parched our water, 
We had been stained with bitter blood, 

And had run mute, 'mid shrieks of slaughter, 80 

Thro' a city and a solitude. 

Third Voice : from the Air. 

I had clothed, since Earth uprose, 

Its wastes in colours not their own, 
And oft had my serene repose 

Been cloven by many a rending groan. 

FOURTH VOICE : from the Whirlwinds. 

We had soared beneath these mountains 
Unresting ages ; nor had thunder, 



act i.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 13 

Nor yon volcano's flaming fountains, 
Nor any power above or under 
Ever made us mute with wonder. 90 

First Voice. 

But never bowed our snowy crest 
As at the voice of thine unrest. 

Second Voice. 

Never such a sound before 
To the Indian waves we bore. 
A pilot asleep on the howling sea 
Leaped up from the deck in agony, 
And heard, and cried, " Ah, woe is me ! " 
And died as mad as the wild waves be. 

Third Voice. 

By such dread words from Earth to Heaven 
My still realm was never riven : 100 

When its wound was closed, there stood 
Darkness o'er the day like blood. 

Fourth Voice. 

And we shrank back : for dreams of ruin 
To frozen caves our flight pursuing 
Made us keep silence — thus — and thus — 
Though silence is a hell to us. 

The Earth. 

The tongueless Caverns of the craggy hills 

Cried, ' Misery ! ' then ; the hollow Heaven replied 



14 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act I. 

' Misery ! ' And the Ocean's purple waves, 

Climbing the land, howled to the lashing winds, no 

And the pale nations heard it, ' Misery ! ' 

Prometheus. 

I heard a sound of voices : not the voice 
Which I gave forth. Mother, thy sons and thou 
Scorn him, without ^vhose all- enduring will 
Beneath the fierce omnipotence of Jove, 
Both they and thou had vanished, like thin mist 
Unrolled on the morning wind. Know ye not me, 
The Titan? He who made his agony 
The barrier to your else all-conquering foe ? 
Oh rock-embosomed lawns, and snow- fed streams, 120 

Now seen athwart frore vapours, deep below, 
Thro' whose o'ershadowing woods I wandered once 
With Asia, drinking life from her loved eyes ; 
W T hy scorns the spirit which informs ye, now 
• To commune with me? me alone, who checked, 
As one who checks a fiend-drawn charioteer, 
The falsehood and the force of him who reigns 
Supreme, and with the groans of pining slaves 
Fills your dim glens and liquid wildernesses : 
Why answer ye not, still ? Brethren ! 

The Earth. 

They dare not. 130 

Prometheus. 

Who dares? for I would hear that curse again. 
Ha, what an awful whisper rises up ! 



act I.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 15 

Tis scarce like sound : it tingles thro' the frame 
As lightning tingles, hovering ere it strike. 
Speak, Spirit ! From thine inorganic voice 
I only know that thou art moving near 
And love. How cursed I him ? 

The Earth. 

How canst thou hear 
Who knowest not the language of the dead ? 

Prometheus. 
Thou art a living spirit : speak as they. 

The Earth. 

I dare not speak like life, lest Heaven's fell King 140 

Should hear, and link me to some wheel of pain 

More torturing than the one whereon I roll. 

Subtle thou art and good, and tho' the Gods 

Hear not this voice, yet thou art more than God, 

Being wise and kind : earnestly hearken now. 

Prometheus. 

Obscurely thro' my brain, like shadows dim, 
Sweep awful thoughts, rapid and thick. I feel 
Faint, like one mingled in entwining love ; 
Yet 'tis not pleasure. 

The Earth. 

No, thou canst not hear : 
Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known 150 

Only to those who die. 



16 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act I. 

Prometheus. 
And what art thou, 
O, melancholy Voice ? 

The Earth. 

I am the Earth, 
Thy mother ; she within whose stony veins, 
To the last fibre of the loftiest tree 
Whose thin leaves trembled in the frozen air, 
Joy ran, as blood within a living frame, 
When thou didst from her bosom, like a cloud 
Of glory, arise, a spirit of keen joy ! 
And at thy voice her pining sons uplifted 
Their prostrate brows from the polluting dust, 160 

And our almighty Tyrant with fierce dread 
Grew pale, until his thunder chained thee here. 
Then, see those million worlds which burn and roll 
Around us : their inhabitants beheld 
My sphered light wane in wide Heaven ; the sea 
Was lifted by strange tempest, and new fire 
From earthquake-rifted mountains of bright snow 
Shook its portentous hair beneath Heaven's frown ; 
Lightning and Inundation vexed the plains ; 
Blue thistles bloomed in cities ; foodless toads 170 

Within voluptuous chambers panting crawled : 
Where Plague had fallen on man, and beast, and worm, 
And Famine ; and black blight on herb and tree ; 
And in the corn, and vines, and meadow-grass, 
Teemed ineradicable poisonous weeds 
Draining their growth, for my wan breast was dry 
With grief; and the thin air, my breath, was stained 



act i.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 17 

With the contagion of a mother's hate 

Breathed on her child's destroyer ; aye, I heard 

Thy curse, the which, if thou rememberest not, 180 

Yet my innumerable seas and streams, 

Mountains, and caves, and winds, and yon wide air, 

And the inarticulate people of the dead, 

Preserve, a treasured spell. We meditate 

In secret joy and hope those dreadful words, 

But dare not speak them. 

Prometheus. 

Venerable mother ! 
All else who live and suffer take from thee 
Some comfort ; flowers, and fruits, and happy sounds, 
And love, though fleeting ; these may not be mine. 
But mine own words, I pray, deny me not. 190 

The Earth. 

They shall be told. Ere Babylon was dust, 

The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, 

Met his own image walking in the garden. 

That apparition, sole of men, he saw. 

For know, there are two worlds of life and death : 

One that which thou beholdest ; but the other 

Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit 

The shadows of all forms that think and live 

Till death unite them and they part no more ; 

Dreams and the light imaginings of men, 200 

And all that faith creates or love desires, 

Terrible, strange, sublime, and beauteous shapes. 

There thou art, and dost hang, a writhing shade, 



18 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act i. 

Mid whirlwind-peopled mountains ; all the Gods 

Are there, and all the powers of nameless worlds, 

Vast, sceptred phantoms ; heroes, men, and beasts ; 

And Demogorgon, a tremendous gloom ; 

And he, the supreme Tyrant, on his throne 

Of burning gold. Son, one of these shall utter 

The curse which all remember. Call at will 210 

Thine own ghost, or the ghost of Jupiter, 

Hades or Typhon, or what mightier Gods 

From all-prolific Evil, since thy ruin 

Have sprung, and trampled on my prostrate sons. 

Ask, and they must reply : so the revenge 

Of the Supreme may sweep through vacant shades, 

As rainy wind through the abandoned gate 

Of a fallen palace. 

Prometheus. 
Mother, let not aught 
Of that which may be evil, pass again 

My lips, or those of aught resembling me. 220 

Phantasm of Jupiter, arise, appear ! 

Ione. 
My wings are folded o'er mine ears : 

My wings are crossed o'er mine eyes : 
Yet thro' their silver shade appears, 

And thro' their lulling plumes arise, 
A Shape, a throng of sounds ; 

May it be no ill to thee 
O thou of many wounds ! 
Near whom, for our sweet sister's sake, 
Ever thus we watch and wake. 230 



act i.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 19 

Panthea. 

The sound is of whirlwind underground, 

Earthquake, and fire, and mountains cloven ; 
The shape is awful like the sound, 

Clothed in dark purple, star-inwoven. 
A sceptre of pale gold 

To stay steps proud, o'er the slow cloud 
His veined hand doth hold. 
Cruel he looks, but calm and strong, 
Like one who does, not suffers wrong. 

Phantasm of Jupiter. 

Why have the secret powers of this strange world 240 

Driven me, a frail and empty phantom, hither 

On direst storms ? What unaccustomed sounds 

Are hovering on my lips, unlike the voice 

With which our pallid race hold ghastly talk 

In darkness ? And, proud sufferer, who art thou ? 

Prometheus. 

Tremendous Image, as thou art must be 
He whom thou shadowest forth. I am his foe, 
The Titan. Speak the words which I would hear, 
Although no thought inform thine empty voice. 

The Earth. 

Listen ! And tho' your echoes must be mute, 250 

Grey mountains, and old woods, and haunted springs, 
Prophetic caves, and isle-surrounding streams, 
Rejoice to hear what yet ye cannot speak. 



20 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act i. 

Phantasm. 

A spirit seizes me and speaks within : 
It tears me as fire tears a thunder-cloud. 

Panthea. 

See, how he lifts his mighty looks, the Heaven 
Darkens above. 

Ione. 
He speaks ! O shelter me ! 

Prometheus. 

I see the curse on gestures proud and cold, 

And looks of firm defiance, and calm hate, 

And such despair as mocks itself with smiles, 260 

Written as on a scroll : yet speak : Oh, speak ! 

Phantasm. 

Fiend, I defy thee ! with a calm, fixed mind, 
All that thou canst inflict I bid thee do ; 

Foul Tyrant both of Gods and Human-kind, 
One only being shalt thou not subdue. 

Rain then thy plagues upon me here, 

Ghastly disease, and frenzying fear ; 

And let alternate frost and fire 

Eat into me, and be thine ire 
Lightning, and cutting hail, and legioned forms 270 

Of furies, driving by upon the wounding storms. 

Aye, do thy worst. Thou art omnipotent. 
O'er all things but thyself I gave thee power, 



act I.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 21 

And my own will. Be thy swift mischiefs sent 
To blast mankind, from yon aetherial tower. 

Let thy malignant spirit move 

In darkness over those I love : 

On me and mine I imprecate 

The utmost torture of thy hate ; 
And thus devote to sleepless agony, 280 

This undeclining head while thou must reign on high. 

But thou, who art the God and Lord : O, thou, 
Who fillest with thy soul this world of woe, 

To whom all things of Earth and Heaven do bow 
In fear and worship : all-prevailing foe ! 

I curse thee ! let a sufferer's curse 

Clasp thee, his torturer, like remorse ; 

Till thine Infinity shall be 

A robe of envenomed agony ; 
And thine Omnipotence a crown of pain, 290 

To cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain. 

Heap on thy soul, by virtue of this Curse, 

111 deeds, then be thou damned, beholding good ; 
Both infinite as is the universe, 

And thou, and thy self-torturing solitude. 
An awful image of calm power 
Though now thou sittest, let the hour 
Come, when thou must appear to be 
That which thou art internally. 
And after many a false and fruitless crime 300 

Scorn track thy lagging fall thro' boundless space and 
time. 



22 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act i c 

Prometheus. 
Were these my words, O, Parent? 

The Earth. 

They were thine. 

Prometheus. 

It doth repent me : words are quick and vain ; 

Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine. 
I wish no living thing to suffer pain. 

The Earth. 

Misery, Oh misery to me, 

That Jove at length should vanquish thee. 

Wail, howl aloud, Land and Sea, 

The Earth's rent heart shall answer ye. 
Howl, Spirits of the living and the dead, 310 

Your refuge, your defence lies fallen and vanquished. 

First Echo. 
Lies fallen and vanquished ! 

Second Echo. 
Fallen and vanquished ! 

Ione. 
Fear not : 'tis but some passing spasm, 

The Titan is unvanquished still. 
But see, where thro' the azure chasm 

Of yon forked and snowy hill 
Trampling the slant winds on high 

With golden-sandalled feet, that glow 



4CTI.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 23 

Under plumes of purple dye, 3 20 

Like rose-ensanguined ivory, 

A Shape comes now, 
Stretching on high from his right hand 

A serpent-cinctured wand. 

Panthea. 
Tis Jove's world-wandering herald, Mercury. 

IONE. 

And who are those with hydra tresses 
And iron wings that climb the wind, 

Whom the frowning God represses 
Like vapours steaming up behind, 

Clanging loud, an endless crowd — 33° 

Panthea. 
These are Jove's tempest-walking hounds, 
Whom he gluts with groans and blood, 
When charioted on sulphurous cloud 
He bursts Heaven's bounds. 

Ione. 

Are they now led, from the thin dead 
On new pangs to be fed ? 

Panthea. 
The Titan looks as ever, firm, not proud. 

First Fury. 
Ha ! I scent life ! 



24 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act i. 

Second Fury. 
Let me but look into his eyes ! 

Third Fury. 
The hope of torturing him smells like a heap 340 

Of corpses, to a death-bird after battle. 

First Fury. 
Darest thou delay, O Herald ! Take cheer, Hounds 
Of Hell : what if the Son of Maia soon 
Should make us food and sport — who can please long 
The Omnipotent? 

Mercury. 
Back to your towers of iron, 
And gnash, beside the streams of fire and wail, 
Your foodless teeth. Geryon, arise ! and Gorgon, 
Chimaera, and thou Sphinx, subtlest of fiends 
Who ministered to Thebes Heaven's poisoned wine, 
Unnatural love, and more unnatural hate : 350 

These shall perform your task. 

First Fury. 

Oh, mercy ! mercy ! 
We die with our desire : drive us not back ! 

Mercury. 
Crouch then in silence. 

Awful Sufferer 
To thee unwilling, most unwillingly 
I come, by the great Father's will driven down, 
To execute a doom of new revenge. 



act i.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 25 

Alas ! I pity thee, and hate myself 

That I can do no more : aye from thy sight 

Returning, for a season, Heaven seems Hell, 

So thy worn form pursues me night and day, 360 

Smiling reproach. Wise art thou, firm and good, 

But vainly wouldst stand forth alone in strife 

Against the Omnipotent ; as yon clear lamps 

That measure and divide the weary years 

From which there is no refuge, long have taught 

And long must teach. Even now thy Torturer arms 

With the strange might of unimagined pains 

The powers who scheme slow agonies in Hell, 

And my commission is to lead them here, 

Or what more subtle, foul, or savage fiends 370 

People the abyss, and leave them to their task. 

Be it not so ! there is a secret known 

To thee, and to none else of living things, 

Which may transfer the sceptre of wide Heaven, 

The fear of which perplexes the Supreme : 

Clothe it in words, and bid it clasp his throne 

In intercession ; bend thy soul in prayer, 

And like a suppliant in some gorgeous fane, 

Let the will kneel within thy haughty heart : 

For benefits and meek submission tame 380 

The fiercest and the mightiest. 

Prometheus. 

Evil minds 
Change good to their own nature. I gave all 
He has ; and in return he chains me here 
Years, ages, night and day : whether the Sun 



26 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act i. 

Split my parched skin, or in the moony night 

The crystal-winged snow cling round my hair : 

Whilst my beloved race is trampled down 

By his thought-executing ministers. 

Such is the tyrant's recompense : 'tis just : 

He who is evil can receive no good ; 390 

And for a world bestowed, or a friend lost, 

He can feel hate, fear, shame ; not gratitude : 

He but requites me for his own misdeed. 

Kindness to such is keen reproach, which breaks 

With bitter stings the light sleep of Revenge. 

Submission, thou dost know I cannot try : 

For what submission but that fatal word, 

The death-seal of mankind's captivity, 

Like the Sicilian's hair-suspended sword, 

Which trembles o'er his crown, would he accept, 400 

Or could I yield ? Which yet I will not yield. 

Let others flatter Crime, where it sits throned 

In brief Omnipotence : secure are they : 

For Justice, when triumphant, will weep down 

Pity, not punishment, on her own wrongs, 

Too much avenged by those who err. I wait, 

Enduring thus, the retributive hour 

•Vhich since we spake is even nearer now. 

3ut hark, the hell-hounds clamour : fear delay : 

Behold ! Heaven lowers under thy Father's frown. 410 

Mercury. 

Oh, that we might be spared : I to inflict 
And thou to suffer ! Once more answer me : 
Thou knowest not the period of Jove's power? 



act I.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 27 

Prometheus. 
I know but this, that it must come. 

Mercury. 

Alas! 
Thou canst not count thy years to come of pain ? 

Prometheus. 

They last while Jove must reign : nor more, nor less 
Do I desire or fear. 

Mercury. 

Yet pause, and plunge 
Into Eternity, where recorded time, 
Even all that we imagine, age on age, 

Seems but a point, and the reluctant mind 42c 

Flags wearily in its unending flight, 
Till it sink, dizzy, blind, lost, shelterless ; 
Perchance it has not numbered the slow years 
Which thou must spend in torture, unreprieved? 

Prometheus. 
Perchance no thought can count them, yet they pass. 

Mercury. 

If thou might'st dwell among the Gods the while 
Lapped in voluptuous joy? 

Prometheus. 

I would not quit 
This bleak ravine, these unrepentant pains. 



28 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act i. 

Mercury. 
Alas ! I wonder at, yet pity thee. 

Prometheus. 
Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven, 430 

Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene, 
As light in the sun, throned : how vain is talk ! 
Call up the fiends. 

Ione. 
O, sister, look ! White fire 
Has cloven to the roots yon huge snow-loaded cedar ; 
How fearfully God's thunder howls behind ! 

Mercury. 
I must obey his words and thine : alas ! 
Most heavily remorse hangs at my heart ! 

Panthea. 
See where the child of Heaven, with winged feet, 
Runs down the slanted sunlight of the dawn. 

Ione. 
Dear sister, close thy plumes over thine eyes 440 

Lest thou behold and die : they come : they come 
Blackening the birth of day with countless wings, 
And hollow underneath, like death. 

First Fury. 

Prometheus ! 

Second Fury. 
Immortal Titan ! 



act i.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 29 

Third Fury. 
Champion of Heaven's slaves ! 

Prometheus. 

He whom some dreadful voice invokes is here, 

Prometheus, the chained Titan. Horrible forms, 

What and who are ye? Never yet there came 

Phantasms so foul thro' monster-teeming Hell 

From the all-miscreative brain of Jove ; 

Whilst I behold such execrable shapes, 450 

Methinks I grow like what I contemplate, 

And laugh and stare in loathsome sympathy. 

First Fury. 

We are the ministers of pain, and fear, 
And disappointment, and mistrust, and hate, 
And clinging crime ; and as lean dogs pursue 
Thro' wood and lake some struck and sobbing fawn, 
We track all things that weep, and bleed, and live, 
When the great King betrays them to our will. 

Prometheus. 

Oh ! many fearful natures in one name, 

I know ye ; and these lakes and echoes know 460 

The darkness and the clangour of your wings. 

But why more hideous than your loathed selves 

Gather ye up in legions from the deep ? 

Second Fury. 
We knew not that : Sisters, rejoice, rejoice ! 



30 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act i. 

Prometheus. 
Can aught exult in its deformity? 

Second Fury. 

The beauty of delight makes lovers glad, 

Gazing on one another : so are we. 

As from the rose which the pale priestess kneels 

To gather for her festal crown of flowers 

The aerial crimson falls, flushing her cheek, 470 

So from our victim's destined agony 

The shade which is our form invests us round, 

Else we are shapeless as our mother Night. 

Prometheus. 

I laugh your power, and his who sent you here, 
To lowest scorn. Pour forth the cup of pain. 

First Fury. 

Thou thinkest we will rend thee bone from bone, 
And nerve from nerve, working like fire within? 

Prometheus. 

Pain is my element, as hate is thine ; 
Ye rend me now : I care not. 

Second Fury. 

Dost imagine 
We will but laugh into thy lidless eyes ? 480 

Prometheus. 
I weigh not what ye do, but what ye suffer, 



act l] PR OME THE US UNB O UND. 3 1 

Being evil. Cruel was the power which called 
You, or aught else so wretched, into light. 

Third Fury. 

Thou think'st we will live thro' thee, one by one, 

Like animal life, and tho' we can obscure not 

The soul which burns within, that we will dwell 

Beside it, like a vain loud multitude 

Vexing the self-content of wisest men : 

That we will be dread thought beneath thy brain, 

And foul desire round thy astonished heart, 490 

And blood within thy labyrinthine veins 

Crawling like agony. 

Prometheus. 

Why, ye are thus now ; 
Yet am I king over myself, and rule 
The torturing and conflicting throngs within, 
As Jove rules you when Hell grows mutinous. 

Chorus of Furies. 

From the ends of the earth, from the ends of the earth, 
Where the night has its grave and the morning its birth, 

Come, come, come ! 
Oh, ye who shake hills with the scream of your mirth, 
When cities sink howling in ruin ; and ye 500 

Who with wingless footsteps trample the sea, 
And close upon Shipwreck and Famine's track, 
Sit chattering with joy on the foodless wreck ; 

Come, come, come ! 



32 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act I. 

Leave the bed, low, cold, and red, 
Strewed beneath a nation dead ; 
Leave the hatred, as in ashes 

Fire is left for future burning : 
It will burst in bloodier flashes 

When ye stir it, soon returning : 510 

Leave the self-contempt implanted 
In young spirits, sense-enchanted, 

Misery's yet unkindled fuel : 
Leave Hell's secrets half unchanted 

To the maniac dreamer ; cruel 
More than ye can be with hate 
Is he with fear. 
Come, come, come ! 
We are steaming up from Hell's wide gate 

And we burthen the blasts of the atmosphere, 520 

But vainly we toil till ye come here. 

IONE. 

Sister, I hear the thunder of new wings. 

Panthea. 

These solid mountains quiver with the sound 
Even as the tremulous air : their shadows make 
The space within my plumes more black than night. 

First Fury. 

Your call was as a winged car 
Driven on whirlwinds fast and far ; 
It rapt us from red gulphs of war. 



ACT I.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 33 

Second Fury. 
From wide cities, famine-wasted ; 

Third Fury. 
Groans half heard, and blood untasted ; 530 

Fourth Fury. 
Kingly conclaves stern and cold, 
Where blood with gold is bought and sold ; 

Fifth Fury. 
From the furnace, white and hot, 
In which — 

A Fury. 
Speak not : whisper not : 
I know all that ye would tell, 
But to speak might break the spell 
Which must bend the Invincible, 

The stern of thought ; 
He yet defies the deepest power of Hell. 

Fury. 
Tear the veil ! 

Another Fury. 
It is torn. 

Chorus. 

The pale stars of the morn 540 
Shine on a misery, dire to be borne. 
Dost thou faint, mighty Titan ? We laugh thee to scorn. 
Dost thou boast the clear knowledge thou waken'dst for 
man? 



34 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act i. 

Then was kindled within him a thirst which outran 
Those perishing waters ; a thirst of fierce fever, 
Hope, love, doubt, desire, which consume him for ever. 
One came forth of gentle worth, 
Smiling on the sanguine earth ; 
His words outlived him, like swift poison 

Withering up truth, peace, and pity. 550 

Look ! where round the wide horizon 

Many a million-peopled city 
Vomits smoke in the bright air. 
Mark that outcry of despair ! 
Tis his mild and gentle ghost 

Wailing for the faith he kindled : 
Look again, the flames almost 

To a glow-worm's lamp have dwindled : 
The survivors round the embers 

Gather in dread. 560 

Joy, joy, joy ! 
Past ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers, 
And the future is dark, and the present is spread 
Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head. 

Semichorus I. 

Drops of bloody agony flow . 

From his white and quivering brow. 

Grant a little respite now : 

See a disenchanted nation 

Springs like day from desolation ; 

To Truth its state is dedicate, 570 

And Freedom leads it forth, her mate ; 



act i.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 35 

A legioned band of linked brothers 
Whom Love calls children — 

Semichorus II. 

Tis another's : 
See how kindred murder kin : 
'Tis the vintage-time for death and sin : 
Blood, like new wine, bubbles within : 
Till Despair smothers 
The struggling world, which slaves and tyrants win. 

\_All the Furies vanish except one. 

Ione. 

Hark, sister ! what a low yet dreadful groan, 

Quite unsuppressed is tearing up the heart 580 

Of the good Titan, as storms tear the deep, 

And beasts hear the sea moan in inland caves. 

Darest thou observe how the fiends torture him? | 

Panthea. 
Alas ! I looked forth twice, but will no more. 

Ione. 
What didst thou see ? 

Panthea. 

A woful sight : a youth 
With patient looks nailed to a crucifix. 

Ione. 
What next? 



36 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act i. 

Panthea. 

The heaven around, the earth below 
Was peopled with thick shapes of human death, 
All horrible, and wrought by human hands, 
And some appeared the work of human hearts, 590 

For men were slowly killed by frowns and smiles : 
And other sights too foul to speak and live 
Were wandering by. Let us not tempt worse fear 
By looking forth : those groans are grief enough. 

Furv. 

Behold an emblem : those who do endure 

Deep wrongs for man, and scorn, and chains, but heap 

Thousandfold torment on themselves and him. 

Prometheus. 

Remit the anguish of that lighted stare ; 

Close those wan lips ; let that thorn- wounded brow 

Stream not with blood ; it mingles with thy tears ! 600 

Fix, fix those tortured orbs in peace and death, 

So thy sick throes shake not that crucifix, 

So those pale fingers play not with thy gore. 

O, horrible ! Thy name I will not speak, 

It hath become a curse. I see, I see 

The wise, the mild, the lofty, and the just, 

Whom thy slaves hate for being like to thee, 

Some hunted by foul lies from their heart's home, 

An early-chosen, late-lamented home ; 

As hooded ounces cling to the driven hind ; 610 

Some linked to corpses in unwholesome cells : 



act i.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 37 

Some — Hear I not the multitude laugh loud? — 
Impaled in lingering fire : and mighty realms 
Float by my feet, like sea-uprooted isles, 
Whose sons are kneaded down in common blood 
By the red light of their own burning homes. 

Fury. 
Blood thou canst see, and fire ; and canst hear groans ; 
Worse things, unheard, unseen, remain behind. 

Prometheus. 
Worse ? 

Fury. 
In each human heart terror survives 
The ruin it has gorged : the loftiest fear 620 

All that they would disdain to think were true : 
Hypocrisy and custom make their minds 
The fanes of many a worship, now outworn. 
They dare not devise good for man's estate, 
And yet they know not that they do not dare. 
The good want power, but to weep barren tears. " 
The powerful goodness want : worse need for them. 
The wise want love ; and those who love want wisdom ; 
And all best things are thus confused to ill. 
Many are strong and rich, and would be just, 630 

But live among their suffering fellow-men 
As if none felt : they know not what they do. 

Prometheus. 
Thy words are like a cloud of winged snakes ; 
And yet I pity those they torture not. 



3S PR OME THE US UNB O UND. [act i . 

Fury. 
Thou pitiest them ? I speak no more ! [ Vanishes. 

Prometheus. 

Ah woe ! 
Ah woe ! Alas ! pain, pain ever, for ever ! 
I close my tearless eyes, but see more clear 
Thy works within my woe-illumed mind, 
Thou subtle tyrant ! Peace is in the grave. 
The grave hides all things beautiful and good : 640 

I am a God and cannot find it there, 
Nor would I seek it : for, though dread revenge, 
This is defeat, fierce king, not victory. 
The sights with which thou torturest gird my soul 
With new endurance, till the hour arrives 
When they shall be no types of things which are. 

Panthea. 
Alas ! what sawest thou ? 

Prometheus. ^ 

There are two woes ; , 
To speak, and to behold ; thou spare me one. 
Names are there, Nature's sacred watchwords, they 
Were borne aloft in bright emblazonry ; 650 

The nations thronged around, and cried aloud, 
As with one voice, Truth, liberty, and love i 
Suddenly fierce confusion fell from heaven 
Among them : there was strife, deceit, and fear : 
Tyrants rushed in, and did divide the spoil. 
This was the shadow of the truth I saw. 



act i . ] PE OME THE US UNB O UND. 39 

The Earth. 

I felt thy torture, son, with such mixed joy 

As pain and virtue give. To cheer thy state 

I did ascend those subtle and fair spirits, 

Whose homes are the dim caves of human thought, 660 

And who inhabit, as birds wing the wind, 

Its world-surrounding aether : they behold 

Beyond that twilight realm, as in a glass, 

The future : may they speak comfort to thee ! 

Panthea. 

Look, sister, where a troop- of spirits gather, 

Like flocks of clouds in spring's delightful weather, 

Thronging in the blue air ! 

Ione. 

And see ! more come, 
Like fountain-vapours when the winds are dumb, 
That climb up the ravine in scattered lines. 
And, hark ! is it the music of the pines? 670 

Is it the lake? Is it the waterfall? 

Panthea. 
'Tis something sadder^" sweeter far than all. 

Chorus of Spirits. 

From unremembered ages we 
Gentle guides and guardians be 
Of heaven-oppressed mortality ; 
And we breathe, and sicken not, 
The atmosphere of human thought : 



40 PR OME THE US UNB O UND. [act i. 

Be it dim, and dank, and grey, 
Like a storm-extinguished day, 
Travelled o'er by dying gleams ; 680 

Be it bright as all between 
Cloudless skies and windless streams, 

Silent, liquid, and serene ; 
As the birds within the wind, 

As the fish within the wave, 
As the thoughts of man's own mind 

Float thro' all above the grave ; 
We make there our liquid lair, 
Voyaging cloudlike and unpent 
Thro' the boundless element : 690 

Thence we bear the prophecy 
Which begins and ends in thee*! 

Ione. 

More yet come, one by one : the air around them 
Looks radiant as the air around a star. 

First Spirit. 

On a battle-trumpet's blast 

I fled hither, fast, fast, fast, 

'Mid the darkness upward cast. 

From the dust of creeds outworn, 

From the tyrant's banner torn, 

Gathering 'round me, onward borne, 700 

There was mingled many a cry — 

Freedom ! Hope ! Death ! Victory ! 

Till they faded thro' the sky ; 

And one sound, above, around, 



act I.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 41 

One sound, beneath, around, above, 
Was moving ; 'twas the soul of love ; 
'Twas the hope, the prophecy, 
Which begins and ends in thee. 

Second Spirit. 

A rainbow's arch stood on the sea 

Which rocked beneath, immovably ; 710 

And the triumphant storm did flee, 

Like a conqueror, swift and pro^id, 

Between, with many a captive cloud, 

A shapeless, dark and rapid crowd, 

Each by lightning riven in half : 

I heard the thunder hoarsely laugh : 

Mighty fleets were strewn like chaff 

And spread beneath a hell of death 

O'er the white waters. I alit 

On a great ship lightning-split, 720 

And speeded hither on the sigh 

Of one who gave an enemy 

His plank, then plunged aside to die. 

Third Spirit. 

I sate beside a sage's bed, 

And the lamp was burning red 

Near the book where he had fed, 

When a Dream with plumes of flame, 

To his pillow hovering came, 

And I knew it was the same 

Which had kindled long ago 730 

Pity, eloquence, and woe ; 



42 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act i. 

And the world awhile below 
Wore the shade, its lustre made. 
It has borne me here as fleet 
As Desire's lightning feet : 
I must ride it back ere morrow, 
Or the sage will wake in sorrow. 

Fourth Spirit. 

On a poet's lips I slept 

Dreaming like a love-adept 

In the sound his breathing kept ; 740 

Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses, 

But feeds on the aerial kisses 

Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses. 

He will watch from dawn to gloom 

The lake-reflected sun illume 

The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, 

Nor heed nor see what things they be ; 

But from these create he can 

Forms more real than living man, 

Nurslings of immortality ! 75° 

One of these awakened me, 

And I sped to succour thee. 

Ione. 

Behold'st thou not two shapes from the east and west 

Come, as two doves to one beloved nest, 

Twin nurslings of the all-sustaining air 

On swift still wings glide down the atmosphere ? 

And, hark ! their sweet, sad voices ! 'tis despair 

Mingled with love, and then dissolved in sound. 



act l] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 43 

Panthea. 
Canst thou speak, sister? all my words are drowned. 

Ione. 

Their beauty gives me voice. See how they float 760 

On their sustaining wings of skiey grain, 
Orange and azure deepening into gold : 
Their soft smiles light the air like a star's fire. 

Chorus of Spirits. 
Hast thou beheld the form of Love ? 

Fifth Spirit. 

As over wide dominions 
I sped, like some swift cloud that wings the wide air's 

wildernesses, 
That planet- crested shape swept by on lightning-braided 

pinions, 
Scattering the liquid joy of life from his ambrosial 

tresses : 
His footsteps paved the world with light ; but as I 

passed 'twas fading, 
And hollow Ruin yawned behind : great sages bound in 

madness, 
And headless patriots, and pale youths who perished, 

unupbraiding, 773 

Gleamed in the night. I wandered o'er, till thou, O 

King of sadness, 
Turned by thy smile the worst I saw to recollected 

gladness. 



44 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act I. 

Sixth Spirit. 
Ah, sister ! Desolation is a delicate thing : 
It walks not on the earth, it floats not on the air, 
But treads with killing footstep, and fans with silent 

wing 
The tender hopes which in their hearts the best and 

gentlest bear ; 
Who, soothed to false repose by the fanning plumes 

above 
And the music-stirring motion of its soft and busy feet, 
Dream visions of aerial joy, and call the monster, Love, 
And wake, and find the shadow Pain, as he whom now 

we greet. 780 

Chorus. 

Tho' Ruin now Love's shadow be, 

Following him, destroyingly, 

On Death's white and winged steed, 

Which the fleetest cannot flee, 

Trampling down both flower and weed, 

Man and beast, and foul and fair, 

Like a tempest thro' the air ; 

Thou shalt quell this horseman grim, 

Woundless though in heart or limb. 

Prometheus. 
Spirits ! how know ye this shall be ? 790 

Chorus. 
In the atmosphere we breathe, 
As buds grow red when the snow-storms flee, 
From spring gathering up beneath, 



act i.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 45 

Whose mild winds shake the elder brake, 
And the wandering herdsmen know 
That the white-thorn soon will blow : 
Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Peace, 
When they struggle to increase, 

Are to us as soft winds be 

To shepherd-boys, the prophecy 800 

Which begins and ends in thee. 

Ione. 
Where are the Spirits fled ? 

Panthea. 

Only a sense 
Remains of them, like the omnipotence 
Of music, when the inspired voice and lute 
Languish, ere yet the responses are mute, 
Which thro' the deep and labyrinthine soul, 
Like echoes thro' long caverns, wind and roll. 

Prometheus. 

How fair these air-born shapes ! And yet I feel 

Most vain all hope but love ; and thou art far, 

Asia ! who, when my being overflowed, 810 

Wert like a golden chalice to bright wine 

Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust. 

All things are still : alas ! how heavily 

This quiet morning weighs upon my heart ; 

Tho' I should dream I could even sleep with grief 

If slumber were denied not. I would fain 

Be what it is my destiny to be, 



46 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act I.] 

The saviour and the strength of suffering man, 

Or sink into the original gulph of things : 

There is no agony, and no solace left ; 820 

Earth can console, Heaven can torment no more. 

Panthea. 

Hast thou forgotten one who watches thee 
The cold dark night, and never sleeps but when 
The shadow of thy spirit falls on her ? 

Prometheus. 
I said all hope was vain but love : thou lovest. 

Panthea. 

Deeply in truth; but the eastern star looks white, 

And Asia waits in that far Indian vale 

The scene of her sad exile ; rugged once 

And desolate and frozen, like this ravine ; 

But now invested with fair flowers and herbs, 830 

And haunted by sweet airs and sounds, which flow 

Among the woods and waters, from the aether 

Of her transforming presence, which would fade 

If it were minded not with thine. Farewell ! 



ACT II. 

Scene I. — Morning. A lovely Vale in the Indian Caucasus. 
Asia alone. 

Asia. 

From all the blasts of heaven thou hast descended : 

Yes, like a spirit, like a thought, which makes 

Unwonted tears throng to the horny eyes, 

And beatings haunt the desolated heart, 

Which should have learnt repose : thou hast descended, 

Cradled in tempests ; thou dost wake, O Spring ! 

O child of many winds ! As suddenly 

Thou comest as the memory of a dream, 

Which now is sad because it hath been sweet ; 

Like genius, or like Joy which riseth up 10 

As from the earth, clothing with golden clouds 

The desart of our life. 

This is the season, this the day, the hour ; 

At sunrise thou shouldst come, sweet sister mine, 

Too long desired, too long delaying, come ! 

How like death-worms the wingless moments crawl ! 

The point of one white star is quivering still 

Deep in the orange light of widening morn 

Beyond the purple mountains : thro' a chasm 

Of wind-divided mist the darker lake 20 

Reflects it : now it wanes : it gleams again 

47 



48 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act ii. 

As the waves fade, and as the burning threads 

Of woven cloud unravel in pale air : 

Tis lost ! and through yon peaks of cloud-like snow 

The roseate sunlight quivers : hear I not 

The zEolian music of her sea-green plumes 

Winnowing the crimson dawn? [Panthea enters. 

I feel, I see 
Those eyes which burn thro' smiles that fade in tears, 
Like stars half quenched in mists of silver dew. 
Beloved and most beautiful, who wearest 30 

The shadow of that soul by which I live, 
How late thou art ! the sphered sun had climbed 
The sea ; my heart was sick with hope, before 
The printless air felt thy belated plumes. 

Panthea. 

Pardon, great Sister ! but my wings were faint 

With the delight of a remembered dream, 

As are the noontide plumes of summer winds 

Satiate with sweet flowers. I was wont to sleep 

Peacefully, and awake refreshed and calm 

Before the sacred Titan's fall, and thy 40 

Unhappy love, had made, thro' use and pity, 

Both love and woe familiar to my heart 

As they had grown to thine : erewhile I slept 

Under the glaucous caverns of old Ocean 

Within dim bowers of green and purple moss, 

Cur young Ione's soft and milky arms 

Locked then, as now, behind my dark moist hair, 

While my shut eyes and cheek were pressed within 

The folded depth of her life-breathing bosom : 






scene i.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 49 

But not as now, since I am made the wind 50 

Which fails beneath the music that I bear 

Of thy most wordless converse ; since dissolved 

Into the sense with which love talks, my rest 

Was troubled and yet sweet ; my waking hours 

Too full of care and pain. 

Asia. 

Lift up thine eyes, 
And let me read thy dream. 

Panthea. 

As I have said 
With our sea-sister at his feet I slept. 
The mountain mists, condensing at our voice 
Under the moon, had spread their snowy flakes, 
From the keen ice shielding our linked sleep. 60 

Then two dreams came. One, I remember not. 
But in the other his pale wound-worn limbs 
Fell from Prometheus, and the azure night 
Grew radiant with the glory of that form 
Which lives unchanged within, and his voice fell 
Like music which makes giddy the dim brain, 
Faint with intoxication of keen joy : 
" Sister of her whose footsteps pave the world 
With loveliness — more fair than aught but her 
Whose shadow thou art — lift thine eyes on me." 70 

I lifted them : the overpowering light 
Of that immortal shape was shadowed o'er 
By love ; which, from his soft and flowing limbs, 
And passion-parted lips, and keen, faint eyes, 
Steamed forth like vaporous fire ; an atmosphere 



50 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act n. 

Which wrapped me in its all-dissolving power, 

As the warm aether of the morning sun 

Wraps ere it drinks some cloud of wandering dew. 

I saw not, heard not, moved not, only felt 

His presence flow and mingle thro' my blood 80 

Till it became his life, and his grew mine, 

And I was thus absorbed, until it past, 

And like the vapours when the sun sinks down, 

Gathering again in drops upon the pines, 

And tremulous as they, in the deep night 

My being was condensed ; and, as the rays 

Of thought were slowly gathered, I could hear 

His voice, whose accents lingered ere they died 

Like footsteps of weak melody.: thy name 

Among the many sounds alone I heard 90 

Of what might be articulate ; tho' still 

I listened through the night when sound was none. 

lone wakened then, and said to me : 

" Canst thou divine what troubles me to-night ? 

" I always knew what I desired before, 

" Nor ever found delight to wish in vain. 

" But now I cannot tell thee what I seek ; 

" I know not ; something sweet, since it is sweet 

" Even to desire ; it is thy sport, false sister ; 

" Thou hast discovered some enchantment old, too 

" Whose spells have stolen my spirit as I slept 

"And mingled it with thine : for when just now 

" We kissed, I felt within thy parted lips 

" The sweet air that sustained me, and the warmth 

" Of the life-blood, for loss of which I faint, 

" Quivered between our intertwining arms." 



7 



scene i.] PR OME THE US UNB O UND. 5 1 

I answered not, for the Eastern star grew pale, 
But fled to thee. 

Asia. 

Thou speakest, but thy words 
Are as the air : I feel them not : Oh, lift 
Thine eyes, that I may read his written soul ! no 

Panthea. 

I lift them tho' they droop beneath the load 

Of that they would express : what canst thou see 

But thine own fairest shadow imaged there ? 

Asia. 

Thine eyes are like the deep, blue, boundless heaven 
Contracted to two circles underneath 
Their long fine lashes ; dark, far, measureless, 
Orb within orb, and line thro' line inwoven. 

Panthea. 
Why lookest thou as if a spirit past? 

Asia. 

There is a change : beyond their inmost depth 

I see a shade, a shape : 'tis He, arrayed 120 

In the soft light of his own smiles, which spread 

Like radiance from the cloud-surrounded moon. 

Prometheus, it is thine ! Depart not yet ! 

Say not those smiles that we shall meet again 

Within that bright pavilion which their beams 

Shall build on the waste world? The dream is told. 



52 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act n. 

What shape is that between us? Its rude hair 

Roughens the wind that lifts it, its regard 

Is wild and quick, yet 'tis a thing of air, 

For thro' its grey robe gleams the golden dew 130 

Whose stars the noon has quenched not. 

Dream. 

Follow ! follow ! 

Panthea. 

It is mine other dream. 

Asia. 
It disappears. 

Panthea. 

It passes now into my mind. Methought 

As we sate here, the flower-infolding buds 

Burst on yon lightning-blasted almond-tree, 

When swift from the white Scythian wilderness 

A wind swept forth wrinkling the earth with frost : 

I looked, and all the blossoms were blown down ; 

But on each leaf was stamped, as the blue bells 

Of Hyacinth tell Apollo's written grief, 140 

o, follow, follow ! 

Asia. 

As you speak, your words 
Fill, pause by pause, my own forgotten sleep 
With shapes. Methought among the lawns together 
We wandered, underneath the young grey dawn, 
And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds 
Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains 
Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind ; 



scene i.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 53 

And the white dew on the new bladed grass, 

Just piercing the dark earth, hung silently : 

And there was more which I remember not : 150 

But on the shadows of the morning clouds, 

Athwart the purple mountain slope, was written 

Follow, O, follow ! as they vanished by, 

And on each herb, from which Heaven's dew had fallen, 

The like was stamped, as with a withering fire, 

A wind arose among the pines ; it shook 

The clinging music from their boughs, and then 

Low, sweet, faint sounds, like the farewell of ghosts, 

Were heard : O, follow, follow, follow me ! 

And then I said : " Panthea, look on me." 160 

But in the depth of those beloved eyes 

Still I saw, follow, follow ! 

Echo. 

Follow, follow ! 

Panthea. 
The crags, this clear spring morning, mock our voices 
As they were spirit-tongued. 

Asia. 

It is some being 
Around the crags. What fine clear sounds ! O, list ! 
Echoes {unseen). 
Echoes we : listen ! 
We cannot stay : 
As dew-stars glisten 
Then fade away — 

Child of Ocean ! 170 



54 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act ii. 

Asia. 

Hark ! Spirits speak. The liquid responses 
Of their aerial tongues yet sound. 



Panthea. 



I hear. 



Echoes. 
O, follow, follow, 

As our voice recedeth 
Thro' the caverns hollow, 

Where the forest spreadeth ; 
(More distant.) 
O, follow, follow ! 
Thro' the caverns hollow, 
As the song floats thou pursue, 
Where the wild bee never flew, 1S0 

Thro' the noon-tide darkness deep, 
By the odour-breathing sleep 
Of faint night flowers, and the waves 
At the fountain-lighted caves, 
While our music, wild and sweet, 
Mocks thy gently falling feet, 
Child of Ocean ! 

Asia. 

Shall we pursue the sound ? It grows more faint 
And distant. 

Panthea. 

List ! the strain floats nearer now. 



scene ii.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 5$ 



[90 



Echoes. 
In the world unknown 

Sleeps a voice unspoken ; 
By thy step alone 

Can its rest be broken ; 
Child of Ocean ! 

Asia. 
How the notes sink upon the ebbing wind ! 

Echoes. 
O, follow, follow, 
Thro' the caverns hollow, 
As the song floats thou pursue, 
By the woodland noon-tide dew ; 
By the forests, lakes, and fountains 200 

Thro' the many-folded mountains ; 
To the rents and gulphs, and chasms, 
Where the Earth reposed from spasms, 
On the day when He and thou 
Parted, to commingle now ; 
Child of Ocean ! 
Asia. 
Come, sweet Panthea, link thy hand in mine, 
And follow, ere the voices fade away. 

Scene II. — A Forest, intermingled with Rocks and Caverns. 
Asia and Panthea pass into it. Two young Fauns arc 
sitting on a Rock, listening. 

Semichorus I. of Spirits. 
The path thro' which that lovely twain 

Have past, by cedar, pine, and yew, 210 



56 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act n. 

And each dark tree that ever grew, 

Is curtained out from Heaven's wide blue ; 
Nor sun, nor moon, nor wind, nor rain, 
Can pierce its interwoven bowers, 

Nor aught, save where some cloud of dew, 
Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze, 
Between the trunks of the hoar trees, 

Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers 

Of the green laurel, blown anew ; 
And bends, and then fades silently, 220 

One frail and fair anemone : 
Or when some star of many a one 
That climbs and wanders thro' steep night, 
Has found the cleft thro' which alone 
Beams fall from high those depths upon 
Ere it is borne away, away, 
By the swift Heavens that cannot stay, 
It scatters drops of golden light, 
Like lines of rain that ne'er unite : 

And the gloom divine is all around ; 230 

And underneath is the mossy ground. 

Semichorus II. 

There the voluptuous nightingales, 

Are awake thro' all the broad noonday. 
When one with bliss or sadness fails, 
And thro' the windless ivy-boughs, 
Sick with sweet love, droops dying away 
On its mate's music-panting bosom ; 
Another from the swinging blossom, 

Watching to catch the languid close 



scene ii.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 57 

Of the last strain, then lifts on high 240 

The wings of the weak melody, 
Till some new strain of feeling bear 

The song, and all the woods are mute ; 
When there is heard thro' the dim air 
The rush of wings, and rising there 

Like many a lake-surrounded flute, 
Sounds overflow the listener's brain 
So sweet, that joy is almost pain. 

Semichorus I. 

There those enchanted eddies play 

Of echoes, music-tongued, which draw, 250 

By Demogorgon's mighty law, 

With melting rapture, or sweet awe, 
All spirits on that secret way ; 

As inland boats are driven to Ocean 
Down streams made strong with mountain-thaw : 
And first there comes a gentle sound 
To those in talk or slumber bound, 

And wakes the destined. Soft emotion 
Attracts, impels them : those who saw- 
Say from the breathing earth behind 260 

There steams a plume-uplifting wind 
Which drives them on their path, while they 

Believe their own swift wings and feet 
The sweet desires within obey : 
And so they float upon their way, 
Until, still sweet, but loud and strong, 
The storm of sound is driven along, 



58 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act n. 

Sucked up and hurrying : as they fleet 

Behind, its gathering billows meet 
And to the fatal mountain bear 270 

Like clouds amid the yielding air. 

First Faun. 
Canst thou imagine where those spirits live 
Which make such delicate music in the woods ? 
We haunt within the least frequented caves 
And closest coverts, and we know these wilds, 
Yet never meet them, tho' we hear them oft : 
Where may they hide themselves? 

Second Faun. 

Tis hard to tell : 
I have heard those more skilled in spirits say, 
The bubbles, which the enchantment of the sun 
Sucks from the pale faint water-flowers that pave 280 

The oozy bottom of clear lakes and pools, 
Are the pavilions where such dwell and float 
Under the green and golden atmosphere 
Which noon-tide kindles thro' the woven leaves ; 
And when these burst, and the thin fiery air, 
The which they breathed within those lucent domes, 
Ascends to flow like meteors thro' the night, 
They ride on them, and rein their headlong speed, 
And bow their burning crests, and glide in fire 
Under the waters of the earth again. 290 

First Faun. 
If such live thus, have others other lives, 
Under pink blossoms or within the bells 



scene in.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 59 

Of meadow flowers, or folded violets deep, 
Or on their dying odours, when they die, 
Or in the sunlight of the sphered dew ? 

Second Faun. 

Aye, many more which we may well divine. 

But, should we stay to speak, noon-tide would come, 

And thwart Silenus find his goats undrawn, 

And grudge to sing those wise and lovely songs 

Of fate, and chance, and God, and Chaos old, 300 

And Love, and the chained Titan's woful doom, 

And how he shall be loosed, and make the earth 

One brotherhood : delightful strains which cheer 

Our solitary twilights, and which charm 

To silence the unenvying nightingales. 



Scene III. — A Pinnacle of Rock among Mountains. Asia 
and Panthea. 

Panthea. 

Hither the sound has borne us — to the realm 

Of Demogorgon, and the mighty portal, 

Like a volcano's meteor-breathing chasm, 

Whence the oracular vapour is hurled up 

Which lonely men drink wandering in their youth, 310 

And call truth, virtue, love, genius, or joy, 

That maddening wine of life, whose dregs they drain 

To deep intoxication ; and uplift 

Like Maenads who cry loud, Evoe ! Evoe ! 

The voice which is contagion to the world. 



60 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act n. 

Asia. 
Fit throne for such a Power ! Magnificent ! 
How glorious art thou, Earth ! And, if thou be 
The shadow of some spirit lovelier still, 
Though evil stain its work, and it should be 
Like its creation, weak yet beautiful, 320 

I could fall down and worship that and thee. 
Even now my heart adoreth : Wonderful ! 
Look, sister, ere the vapour dim thy brain : 
Beneath is a wide plain of billowy mist, 
As a lake, paving in the morning sky, 
With azure waves which burst in silver light, 
Some Indian vale. Behold it, rolling on 
Under the curdling winds, and islanding 
The peak whereon we stand, midway, around, 
Encinctured by the dark and blooming forests, 330 

Dim twilight-lawns, and stream-illumined caves, 
And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist ; 
And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains 
From icy spires of sun-like radiance fling 
The dawn, as lifted Ocean's dazzling spray, 
From some Atlantic islet scattered up, 
Spangles the wind with lamp-like water-drops. 
The vale is girdled with their walls, a howl 
Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines 
Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast, 340 

Awful as silence. Hark ! the rushing snow ! 
The sun-awakened avalanche ! whose mass, 
Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there 
Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds 
As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth 



scene in.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 61 

Is loosened, and the nations echo round, 
Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now. 

Panthea. 

Look how the gusty sea of mist is breaking 

In crimson foam, even at our feet ! it rises 

As Ocean at the enchantment of the moon 350 

Round foodless men wrecked on some oozy isle. 

Asia. 

The fragments of the cloud are scattered up ; 
The wind that lifts them disentwines my hair ; 
Its billows now sweep o'er mine eyes ; my brain 
Grows dizzy ; I see thin shapes within the mist. 

Panthea. 

A countenance with beckoning smiles : there burns 
An azure fire within its golden locks ! 
Another and another : hark ! they speak ! 

Song of Spirits. 

To the deep, to the deep, 

Down, down ! 360 

Through the shade of sleep, 
Through the cloudy strife 
Of Death and of Life ; 
Through the veil and the bar 
Of things which seem and are 
Even to the steps of the remotest throne, 

Down, down ! 



62 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act ii. 

While the sound whirls around 

Down, down ! 
As the fawn draws the hound, 370 

As the lightning the vapour, 
As a weak moth the taper ; 
Death, despair ; love, sorrow ; 
Time, both ; to-day, to-morrow ; 
As steel obeys the spirit of the stone, 

Down, down ! 

Through the grey, void abysm, 

Down, down ! 
Where the air is no prism, 

And the moon and stars are not, 380 

And the cavern-crags wear not 
The radiance of Heaven 
Nor the gloom to Earth given, 
Where there is one pervading, one alone, 

Down, down ! 

In the depth of the deep, 

Down, down ! 
Like veiled lightning asleep, 
Like the spark nursed in embers, 
The last look Love remembers, 390 

Like a diamond, which shines 
On the dark wealth of mines, 
A spell is treasured but for thee alone. 

Down, down ! 

We have bound thee, we guide thee ; 
Down, down ! 



scene iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 63 

With the bright form beside thee ; 
Resist not the weakness, 
Such strength is in meekness 

That the Eternal, the Immortal, 400 

Must unloose through life's portal 
The snake-like Doom coiled underneath his 
throne 

By that alone. 



Scene IV. — The Cave of Demogorgon. Asia and Panthea. 

Panthea. 
What veiled form sits on that ebon throne ? 

Asia. 
The veil has fallen. 

Panthea. 

I see a mighty darkness \ 
Filling the seat of power, and rays of gloom 
Dart round, as light from the meridian sun, 
Ungazed upon and shapeless ; neither limb, 
Nor form, nor outline ; yet we feel it is 
A living Spirit. 

Demogorgon. 

Ask what thou wouldst know. 



410 



Asia. 
What canst thou tell ? 



Demogorgon. 
All things thou dar'st demand. 



64 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act n. 

Asia. 
Who made the living world ? 

Demogorgon. 
God. 

Asia. 

Who made all 
That it contains? thought, passion, reason, will, 
Imagination ? 

Demogorgon. 
God : Almighty God. 

Asia. 
Who made that sense which, when the winds of spring 
In rarest visitation, or the voice 
Of one beloved heard in youth alone, 
Fills the faint eyes with falling tears which dim 
The radiant looks of unbewailing flowers, 
And leaves this peopled earth a solitude 420 

When it returns no more ? 

Demogorgon. 

Merciful God. 
Asia. 
And who made terror, madness, crime, remorse, 
Which from the links of the great chain of things, 
To every thought within the mind of man 
Sway and drag heavily, and each one reels 
Under the load towards the pit of death ; 
Abandoned hope, and love that turns to hate ; 



scene iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 65 

And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood ; 

Pain, whose unheeded and familiar speech 

Is howling, and keen shrieks, day after day ; 430 

And Hell, or the sharp fear of Hell ? 



Demogorgon. 



He reigns. 



Asia. 
Utter his name : a world pining in pain 
Asks but his name : curses shall drag him down. 

Demogorgon. 

He reigns. 
Asia. 
I feel, I know it : who? 

Demogorgon. 

He reigns. 

Asia. 
Who reigns ? There was the Heaven and Earth at first, 
And Light and Love ; then Saturn, from whose throne 
Time fell, an envious shadow : such the state 
Of the earth's primal spirits beneath his sway, 
As the calm joy of flowers and living leaves 
Before the wind or sun has withered them 44 o 

And semivital worms ; but he refused 
The birthright of their being, knowledge, power, 
The skill which wields the elements, the thought 
Which pierces this dim universe like light, 
Self-empire, and the majesty of love ; 
For thirst of which they fainted. Then Prometheus 



66 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act n. 

Gave wisdom, which is strength, to Jupiter, 

And, with this law alone, ' Let man be free,' 

Clothed him with the dominion of wide Heaven. 

To know nor faith, nor love, nor law ; to be 45 o 

Omnipotent but friendless is to reign ; 

And Jove now reigned ; for on the race of man 

First famine, and then toil, and then disease, 

Strife, wounds, and ghastly death unseen before, 

Fell ; and the unseasonable seasons drove 

With alternating shafts of frost and fire, 

Their shelterless, pale tribes to mountain-caves : 

And in their desert hearts fierce wants he sent, 

! And mad disquietudes, and shadows idle 
Of unreal good, which levied mutual war, 460 

So ruining the lair wherein they raged. 
Prometheus saw, and waked the legioned hopes 
Which sleep within folded Elysian flowers, 
Nepenthe, Moly, Amaranth, fadeless blooms, 
That they might hide with thin and rainbow wings 
The shape of Death ; and Love he sent to bind 
The disunited tendrils of that vine 
Which bears the wine of life, the human heart ; 

\ And he tamed fire which, like some beast of prey, 

I Most terrible, but lovely, played beneath 
The frown of man ; and tortured to his will 
Iron and gold, the slaves and signs of power, 
And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms 
Hidden beneath the mountains and the waves. 
He gave man speech, and speech created thought, 
Which is the measure of the universe ; 
And science struck the thrones of earth and heaven, 



470 



scene iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 67 

Which shook, but fell not ; and the harmonious mind 

Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song ; 

And music lifted up the listening spirit 480 

Until it walked, exempt from mortal care, 

Godlike, o'er the clear billows of sweet sound ; 

And human hands first mimicked and then mocked, 

With moulded limbs more lovely than its own, 

The human form, till marble grew divine ; 

And mothers, gazing, drank the love men see 

Reflected in their race, behold, and perish. 

He told the hidden power of herbs and springs, 

And Disease drank and slept. Death grew like sleep. 

He taught the implicated orbits woven 490 

Of the wide-wandering stars ; and how the sun 

Changes his lair, and by what secret spell 

The pale moon is transformed, when her broad eye 

Gazes not on the interlunar sea : 

He taught to rule, as life directs the limbs, 

The tempest- winged chariots of the Ocean, 

And the Celt knew the Indian. Cities then 

Were built, and through their snow-like columns flowed 

The warm winds, and the azure aether shone, 

And the blue sea and shadowy hills were seen. 500 

Such, the alleviations of his state, 

Prometheus gave to man, for which he hangs 

Withering in destined pain : but who rains down 

Evil, the immedicable plague, which, while 

Man looks on his creation like a God 

And sees that it is glorious, drives him on 

The wreck of his own will, the scorn of earth, 

The outcast, the abandoned, the alone? 



68 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act n. 

Not Jove : while yet his frown shook heaven, aye, when 
His adversary from adamantine chains 510 

Cursed him, he trembled like a slave. Declare 
Who is his master ? Is he too a slave ? 

Demogorgon. 

All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil : 
Thou knowest if Jupiter be such or no. 

Asia. 
Whom called 'st thou God? 

Demogorgon. 

I spoke but as ye speak, 
For Jove is the supreme of living things. 

Asia. 
Who is master of the slave ? 

Demogorgon. 

If the abysm 
Could vomit forth his secrets . . . But a voice 
Is wanting, the deep truth is imageless ; 
For what would it avail to bid tnee gaze 520 

On the revolving world? What to bid speak 
Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance and Change ? To these 
All things are subject but eternal Love. 

Asia. 

So much I asked before, and my heart gave 

The response thou hast given ; and of such truths 



scene iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 69 

Each to itself must be the oracle. 

One more demand ; and do thou answer me 

As my own soul would answer, did it know 

That which I ask. Prometheus shall arise 

Henceforth the sun of this rejoicing world : 530 

When shall the destined hour arrive? 

Demogorgon. 

Behold ! 

Asia. 

The rocks are cloven, and through the purple night 

I see cars drawn by rainbow-winged steeds 

Which trample the dim winds : in each there stands 

A wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight. 

Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there, 

And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars : 

Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink 

With eager lips the wind of their own speed, 

As if the thing they loved fled on before, 540 

And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks 

Stream like a comet's flashing hair : they all 

Sweep onward. 

Demogorgon. 
These are the immortal Hours, 
Of whom thou didst demand. One waits for thee. 

Asia. 
A spirit with a dreadful countenance 
Checks its dark chariot by the craggy gulph. 
Unlike thy brethren, ghastly charioteer, 
Who art thou ? Whither wouldst thou bear me ? Speak ! 



70 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act n. 

Spirit. 
I am the shadow of a destiny 

More dread than is my aspect : ere yon planet 550 

Has set, the darkness which ascends with me 
Shall wrap in lasting night heaven's kingless throne. 

Asia. 
What meanest thou? 

Panthea. 
That terrible shadow floats 
Up from its throne, as may the lurid smoke 
Of earthquake-ruined cities o'er the sea. 
Lo ! it ascends the car ; the coursers fly 
Terrified : watch its path among the stars 
Blackening the night ! 

Asia. 
Thus I am answered : strange ! 

Panthea. 
See, near the verge, another chariot stays ; 
An ivory shell inlaid with crimson fire, 560 

Which comes and goes within its sculptured rim 
Of delicate strange tracery ; the young spirit 
That guides it has the dove-like eyes of hope ; 
How its soft smiles attract the soul ! as light 
Lures winged insects through the lampless air. 

Spirit. 
My coursers are fed with the lightning, 
They drink of the whirlwind's stream, 
And when the red morning is bright'ning 



scene v.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 71 

They bathe in the fresh sunbeam ; 
They have strength for their swiftness I deem, 570 
Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean. 

I desire : and their speed makes night kindle ; 
I fear : they outstrip the Typhoon ; 

Ere the cloud piled on Atlas can dwindle 
We encircle the earth and the moon : 
We shall rest from long labours at noon : 

Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean. 



Scene V. — The Car pauses within a Cloud on the Top of a 
snowy Mountain. Asia, Panthea, and the Spirit of the 
Hour. 

Spirit. 
On the brink of the night and the morning 

My coursers are wont to respire ; 
But the Earth has just whispered a warning 580 

That their flight must be swifter than fire : 
They shall drink the hot speed of desire ! 

Asia. 
Thou breathest on their nostrils, but my breath 
Would give them swifter speed. 

Spirit. 

Alas ! it could not. 

Panthea. 
Oh Spirit ! pause, and tell whence is the light 
Which fills the cloud ? The sun is yet unrisen. 



72 PI? OME THE US UNB O UND. [ act 1 1 . 

Spirit. 

The sun will rise not until noon. Apollo 

Is held in heaven by wonder ; and the light 

Which fills this vapour, as the aerial hue 

Of fountain-gazing roses fills the water, 590 

Flows from thy mighty sister. 

Panthea. 

Yes, I feel — 
Asia. 
What is it with thee, sister? Thou art pale. 

Panthea. 

How thou art changed ! I dare not look on thee ; 

I feel but see thee not. I scarce endure 

The radiance of thy beauty. Some good change 

I< working in the elements, which suffer 

Thy presence thus unveiled. The Nereids tell 

That on the day when the clear hyaline 

Was cloven at thy uprise, and thou didst stand 

Within a veined shell, which floated on 600 

lOver the calm floor of the crystal sea, 

Among the .'Egean isles, and by the shores 

Which bear thy name ; love, like the atmosphere 

Of the sun's fire filling the living world, 

Burst from thee, and illumined earth and heaven 

And the deep ocean and the sunless caves 

And all that dwells within them ; till grief cast 

Eclipse upon the soul from which it came : 

Such art thou now ; nor is it I alone, 



scene v.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 73 

Thy sister, thy companion, thine own chosen one, 610 

But the whole world which seeks thy sympathy. 

Hear'st thou not sounds i' the air which speak the love 

Of all articulate beings? Feel'st thou not 

The inanimate winds enamoured of thee ? List ! 

[Music. 
Asia. 
Thy words are sweeter than aught else but his 
Whose echoes they are : yet all love is sweet, 
Given or returned. Common as light is love, 
And its familiar voice wearies not ever. 
Like the wide heaven, the all-sustaining air, 
It makes the reptile equal to the God : 620 

They who inspire it most are fortunate, 
As I am now ; but those who feel it most 
Are happier still, after long sufferings, 
As I shall soon become. 

Panthea. 
List ! Spirits speak. 

VOICE in the Air, smging. 

Life of Life ! thy lips enkindle 

With their love the breath between them ; 

And thy smiles before they dwindle 

Make the cold air fire ; then screen them 

In those looks, where whoso gazes 

Faints, entangled in their mazes. 630 

Child of Light ! thy lips are burning 

Thro' the vest which seems to hide them ; 
As the radiant lines of morning 



\ 



74 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act n. 

Thro' the clouds ere they divide them ; 
And this atmosphere divinest 
Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest. 

Fair are others ; none beholds thee, 
But thy voice sounds low and tender 

Like the fairest, for it folds thee 

From the sight, that liquid splendour, 640 

And all feel, yet see thee never, 

A_s I feel now, lost for ever ! 

Lamp of Earth ! where'er thou movest 
Its dim shapes are clad with brightness, 

And the souls of whom thou lovest 
Walk upon the winds with lightness, 

Till they fail, as I am failing, 

Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing ! 

Asia. 

My soul is an enchanted boat, 

Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float 650 

Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing ; 

And thine doth like an angel sit 

Beside the helm conducting it, 
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing. 

It seems to float ever, for ever, 

Upon that many-winding river, 

Between mountains, woods, abysses, 

A paradise of wildernesses ! 
Till, like one in slumber bound, 
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around, 660 

Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound : 



scene v.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 75 

Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions 

In music's most serene dominions ; 
Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven. 

And we sail on, away, afar, 

Without a course, without a star, 
But, by the instinct of sweet music driven ; 

Till through Elysian garden islets 

By thee, most beautiful of pilots, 

Where never mortal pinnace glided, 670 

The boat of my desire is guided : 
Realms where the air we breathe is love, 
Which in the winds and on the waves doth move, 
Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above. 

We have past Age's icy caves, 

And Manhood's dark and tossing waves, 
And Youth's smooth ocean, smiling to betray : 

Beyond the glassy gulphs we flee 

Of shadow-peopled Infancy, 
Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day : 680 

A paradise of vaulted bowers, 

Lit by downward- gazing flowers, 

And watery paths that wind between 

Wildernesses calm and green, 
Peopled by shapes too bright to see, 
And rest, having beheld ; somewhat like thee ; 
Which walk upon the sea, and chaunt melodiously ! 



ACT III. 

Scene I. — Heaven. Jupiter on his Throne; Thetis and 
the other Deities assembled. 

Jupiter. 

Ye congregated powers of heaven, who share 
The glory and the strength of him ye serve, 
Rejoice ! henceforth I am omnipotent. 
All else had been subdued to me ; alone 
The soul of man, like unextinguished fire, 
Yet burns towards heaven with fierce reproach, and doubt, 
And lamentation, and reluctant prayer, 
Hurling up insurrection, which might make 
Our antique empire insecure, though built 
On eldest faith, and hell's coeval, fear j 10 

And tho' my curses thro' the pendulous air, 
Like snow on herbless peaks, fall flake by flake, 
And cling to it ; tho' under my wrath's might 
It climb the crags of life, step after step, 
Which wound it, as ice wounds unsandalled feet, 
It yet remains supreme o'er misery, 
Aspiring, unrepressed, yet soon to fall : 
Even now have I begotten a strange wonder, 
That fatal child, the terror of the earth, 
Who waits but till the destined hour arrive, 20 

76 



[scene i.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 11 

Bearing from Demogorgon's vacant throne 
The dreadful might of ever-living limbs 
Which clothed that awful spirit unbeheld 
To redescend, and trample out the spark. 

Pour forth heaven's wine, Idsen Ganymede, 

And let it fill the Daedal cups like fire, 

And from the flower- inwoven soil divine 

Ye all-triumphant harmonies arise, 

As dew from earth under the twilight stars : 

Drink ! be the nectar circling thro' your veins 30 

The soul of joy, ye ever-living Gods, 

Till exultation burst in one wide voice 

Like music from Elysian winds. 

And thou 
Ascend beside me, veiled in the light 
Of the desire which makes thee one with me, 
Thetis, bright image of eternity ! 
When thou didst cry, " Insufferable might ! 
God ! spare me ! I sustain not the quick flames, 
The penetrating presence ; all my being, 
Like him whom the Numidian seps did thaw 40 

Into a dew with poison, is dissolved, 
Sinking thro' its foundations : " even then 
Two mighty spirits, mingling, made a third 
Mightier than either, which, unbodied now, 
Between us floats, felt, although unbeheld, 
Waiting the incarnation, which ascends 
(Hear ye the thunder of the fiery wheels 
Griding the winds ?) from Demogorgon's throne. 
Victory ! victory ! Feel'st thou not, O world, 



7S PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act hi. 

The earthquake of his chariot thundering up 50 

Olympus ? 

{The Car of the Hour arrives. Demogorgon de- 
scends, and moves towards the Throne ^/"Jupiter. 
Awful shape, what art thou ? Speak ! 

Demogorgon. 

Eternity. Demand no direr name. 

Descend, and follow me down the abyss. 

I am thy child, as thou wert Saturn's child ; 

Mightier than thee : and we must dwell together 

Henceforth in darkness. Lift thy lightnings not. 

The tyranny of heaven none may retain, 

Or reassume, or hold, succeeding thee : 

Yet if thou wilt, as 'tis the destiny 

Of trodden worms to writhe till they are dead, 60 

Put forth thy might. 

Jupiter. 

Detested prodigy ! 
Even thus beneath the deep Titanian prisons 
I trample thee ! thou lingerest ? 

Mercy ! mercy ! 
No pity, no release, no respite ! Oh, 
That thou wouldst make mine enemy my judge, 
Even where he hangs, seared by my long revenge, 
( )n Caucasus ! he would not doom me thus. 
Gentle, and just, and dreadless, is he not 
The monarch of the world ? What then art thou ? 
No refuge ! no appeal ! 

Sink with me then, 70 



scene ii. J PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 79 

We two will sink on the wide waves of ruin, 

Even as a vulture and a snake outspent 

Drop, twisted in inextricable fight, 

Into a shoreless sea. Let hell unlock 

Its mounded oceans of tempestuous fire, 

And whelm on them into the bottomless void 

This desolated world, and thee, and me, 

The conqueror and the conquered, and the wreck 

Of that for which they combated ! 

Ai ! Ai ! 
The elements obey me not. I sink 80 

Dizzily down, ever, for ever, down. 
And, like a cloud, mine enemy above 
Darkens my fall with victory ! Ai, Ai ! 



Scene II. — The Month of a great Rive?- in the Island 
Atlantis. Ocean is discovered reclining near the Shore; 
Apollo stands beside him. 

Ocean. 
He fell, thou sayest, beneath his conqueror's frown? 

Apollo. 
Aye, when the strife was ended which made dim 
The orb I rule, and shook the solid stars, 
The terrors of his eye illumined heaven 
With sanguine light, through the thick ragged skirts 
Of the victorious darkness, as he fell : 

Like the last glare of day's red agony, 90 

Which, from a rent among the fiery clouds, 
Burns far along the tempest-wrinkled deep. 



SO PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act hi. 

Ocean. 
He sunk to the abyss? To the dark void? 

Apollo. 

An eagle so caught in some bursting cloud 

On Caucasus, his thunder-baffled wings 

Entangled in the whirlwind, and his eyes 

Which gazed on the undazzling sun, now blinded 

By the white lightning, while the ponderous hail 

Beats on his struggling form, which sinks at length 

Prone, and the aerial ice clings over it. ioo 

Ocean. 

Henceforth the fields of Heaven-reflecting sea 

Which are my realm, will heave, unstained with blood, 

Beneath the uplifting winds, like plains of corn 

Swayed by the summer air ; my streams will flow 

Round many-peopled continents, and round 

Fortunate isles ; and from their glassy thrones 

Blue Proteus and his humid nymphs shall mark 

The shadow of fair ships, as mortals see 

The floating bark of the light-laden moon 

With that white star, its sightless pilot's crest, no 

Borne down the rapid sunset's ebbing sea ; 

Tracking their path no more by blood and groans, 

And desolation, and the mingled voice 

Of slavery and command ; but by the light 

Of wave-reflected flowers, and floating odours, 

And music soft, and mild, free, gentle voices, 

And sweetest music, such as spirits love. 



scene ii.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 81 

Apollo. 

And I shall gaze not on the deeds which make 

My mind obscure with sorrow, as eclipse 

Darkens the sphere I guide ; but list, I hear 120 

The small, clear, silver lute of the young Spirit 

That sits i' the morning star. 

Ocean. 

Thou must away ; 
Thy steeds will pause at even, till when farewell : 
The loud deep calls me home even now to feed it 
With azure calm out of the emerald urns 
Which stand for ever full beside my throne. 
Behold the Nereids under the green sea, 
Their wavering limbs borne on the wind-lrke stream, 
Their white arms lifted o'er their streaming hair 
With garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns, 130 

Hastening to grace their mighty sister's joy. 

\_A sound of waves is heard. 
It is the unpastured sea hungering for calm. 
Peace, monster ; I come now. Farewell. 

Apollo. 

Farewell. 



82 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act hi. 

Scene III. — Caucasus. Prometheus, Hercules, Ione, the 
Earth, Spirits, Asia and Panthea, borne in the Car with 
the Spirit of the Hour. 

Hercules unbinds Prometheus, who descends. 

Hercules. 
Most glorious among spirits, thus doth strength 
To wisdom, courage, and long-suffering love, 
And thee, who art the form they animate, 
Minister like a slave. 

Prometheus. 
Thy gentle words 
Are sweeter even than freedom long desired 
And long delayed. 

Asia, thou light of life, 
Shadow of beauty unbeheld : and ye, i 4 o 

Fair sister nymphs, who made long years of pain 
Sweet to remember, thro' your love and care : 
Henceforth we will not part. There is a cave, 
All overgrown with trailing odorous plants, 
Which curtain out the day with leaves and flowers, 
And paved with veined emerald, and a fountain 
Leaps in the midst with an awakening sound. 
From its curved roof the mountain's frozen tears 
Like snow, or silver, or long diamond spires, 
Hang downward, raining forth a doubtful light : 150 

And there is heard the ever-moving air, 
Whispering without from tree to tree, and birds, 
And bees ; and all around are mossy seats, 
And the rough walls are clothed with long soft grass ; 



scene in.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. S3 

A simple dwelling, which shall be our own ; 

Where we will sit and talk of time and change, 

As the world ebbs and flows, ourselves unchanged. 

What can hide man from mutability? 

And if ye sigh, then I will smile ; and thou, 

lone, shalt chaunt fragments of sea-music, r6o 

Until I weep, when ye shall smile away 

The tears she brought, which yet were sweet to shed. 

We will entangle buds and flowers and beams 

Which twinkle on the fountain's brim, and make 

Strange combinations out of common things, 

Like human babes in their brief innocence ; 

And we will search, with looks and words of love, 

For hidden thoughts, each lovelier than the last, 

Our unexhausted spirits ; and like lutes 

Touched by the skill of the enamoured wind, 170 

Weave harmonies divine, yet ever new, 

From difference sweet where discord cannot be ; 

And hither come, sped on the charmed winds, 

Which meet from all the points of heaven, as bees 

From every flower aerial Enna feeds, 

At their own island-homes in Himera 

The echoes of the human world, which tell 

Of the low voice of love, almost unheard, 

And dove-eyed pity's murmured pain, and music, 

Itself the echo of the heart, and all 180 

That tempers or improves man's life, now free ; 

And lovely apparitions, dim at first, * 

Then radiant, as the mind, arising bright 

From the embrace of beauty, whence the forms 

Of which these are the phantoms, casts on them 



84 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act hi. 

The gathered rays Which are reality, 

Shall visit us, the progeny immortal 

Of Painting, Sculpture, and rapt Poesy, 

And arts, tho' unimagined, yet to be. 

The wandering voices and the shadows these 190 

Of all that man becomes, the mediators 

Of that best worship love, by him and us 

Given and returned ; swift shapes and sounds, which grow 

More fair and soft as man grows wise and kind, 

And, veil by veil, evil and error fall : 

Such virtue has the cave and place around. 

[Turning to the Spirit of the Hour. 
For thee, fair Spirit, one toil remains. lone, 
Give her that curved shell, which Proteus old 
Made Asia's nuptial boon, breathing within it 
A voice to be accomplished, and which thou 200 

Didst hide in grass under the hollow rock. 

Ione. 
Thou most desired Hour, more loved and lovely 
Than all thy sisters, this is the mystic shell ; 
See the pale azure fading into silver 
Lining it with a soft yet glowing light : 
Looks it not like lulled music sleeping there ? 

Spirit. 
It seems in truth the fairest shell of Ocean : 
Its sound must be at once both sweet and strange. 

Prometheus. 
Go, borne over the cities of mankind 
On whirlwind-footed coursers : once again 210 



scene in. j PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 85 

Outspeed the sun around the orbed world ; 
And as thy chariot cleaves the kindling air, 
Thou breathe into the many-folded shell, 
Loosening its mighty music ; it shall be 
As thunder mingled with clear echoes : then 
Return ; and thou shalt dwell beside our cave. 
And thou, O, Mother Earth ! — 

The Earth. 

I hear, I feel ; 
Thy lips are on me, and thy touch runs down 
Even to the adamantine central gloom 

Along these marble nerves ; 'tis life, 'tis joy, 220 

And thro' my withered, old, and icy frame 
The warmth of an immortal youth shoots down 
Circling. Henceforth the many children fair 
Folded in my sustaining arms ; all plants, 
And creeping forms, and insects rainbow-winged, 
And birds, and beasts, and fish, and human shapes, 
Which drew disease and pain from my wan bosom, 
Draining the poison of despair, shall take 
And interchange sweet nutriment. To me 
Shall they become like sister-antelopes 230 

By one fair dam, snow-white and swift as wind, 
Nursed among lilies near a brimming stream. 
The dew-mists of my sunless sleep shall float 
Under the stars like balm : night-folded flowers 
Shall suck unwithering hues in their repose : 
And men and beasts in happy dreams shall gather 
Strength for the coming day, and all its joy : 
And death shall be the last embrace of her 



86 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act in. 

Who takes the life she gave, even as a mother 

Folding her child, says, " Leave me not again." 240 

Asia. 

Oh, mother ! wherefore speak the name of death? 
Cease they to love, and move, and breathe, and speak, 
Who die? 

The Earth. 

It would avail not to reply : 
Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known 
But to the uncommunicating dead. 
Death is the veil which those who live call life : 
They sleep, and it is lifted : and meanwhile 
In mild variety the seasons mild 
With rainbow-skirted showers, and odorous winds, 
And long blue meteors cleansing the dull night, 250 

And the life-kindling shafts of the keen sun's 
All-piercing bow, and the dew-mingled rain 
Of the calm moonbeams, a soft influence mild, 
Shall clothe the forests and the fields, aye, even 
The crag-built desarts of the barren deep, 
With ever-living leaves, and fruits, and flowers. 
And thou ! There is a cavern where my spirit 
Was panted forth in anguish whilst thy pain 
Made my heart mad, and those who did inhale it 
Became mad too, and built a temple there, 260 

And spoke, and were oracular, and lured 
The erring nations round to mutual war, 
And faithless faith, such as Jove kept with thee; 
Which breath now rises, as amongst tall weeds 
A violet's exhalation, and it fills 



scene in.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 87 

With a serener light and crimson air, 

Intense, yet soft, the rocks and woods around ; 

It feeds the quick growth of the serpent vine, 

And the dark linked ivy tangling wild, 

And budding, blown, or odour-faded blooms 270 

Which star the winds with points of coloured light, 

As they rain thro' them, and bright golden globes 

Of fruit, suspended in their own green heaven, 

And thro' their veined leaves and amber stems 

The flowers whose purple and translucent bowls 

Stand ever mantling with aerial dew, 

The drink of spirits : and it circles round, 

Like the soft waving wings of noonday dreams, 

Inspiring calm and happy thoughts, like mine, 

Now thou art thus restored. This cave is thine. 280 

Arise ! Appear ! 

\_A Spirit rises in the likeness of a winged child. 
This is my torch-bearer ; 
Who let his lamp out in old time with gazing 
On eyes from which he kindled it anew 
With love, which is as fire, sweet daughter mine, 
For such is that within thine own. Run, wayward, 
And guide this company beyond the peak 
Of Bacchic Nysa, Maenad-haunted mountain, 
And beyond Indus and its tribute rivers, 
Trampling the torrent streams and glassy lakes 
With feet unwet, unwearied, undelaying, 290 

And up the green ravine, across the vale, 
Beside the windless and crystalline pool 
Where ever lies, on unerasing waves, 
The image of a temple, built above, 



88 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act in. 

Distinct with column, arch, and architrave, 

And palm-like capital, and over- wrought, 

And populous most with living imagery, 

Praxitelean shapes, whose marble smiles 

Fill the hushed air with everlasting love. 

It is deserted now, but once it bore 300 

Thy name, Prometheus ; there the emulous youths 

Bore to thy honour thro' the divine gloom 

The lamp which was thine emblem ; even as those 

Who bear the untransmitted torch of hope 

Into the grave, across the night of life, 

As thou hast borne it most triumphantly 

To this far goal of Time. Depart, farewell. 

Beside that temple is the destined cave. 



Scene IV. — A Forest. In the Backgrotmd a Cave. Pro- 
metheus, Asia, Panthea, Ione, and the Spirit of the 

Earth. 

Ione. 

Sister, it is not earthly : how it glides 

Under the leaves ! how on its head there burns 310 

A light like a green star, whose emerald beams 

Are twined with its fair hair ! how, as it moves, 

The splendour drops in flakes upon the grass ! 

Knowest thou it? 

Panthea. 
It is the delicate spirit 
That guides the earth thro' heaven. From afar 
The populous constellations call that light 
The loveliest of the planets ; and sometimes 



scene iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 89 

It floats along the spray of the salt sea, 

Or makes its chariot of a foggy cloud, 

Or walks thro' fields or cities while men sleep, 320 

Or o'er the mountain-tops, or down the rivers, 

Or through the green waste wilderness, as now, 

Wondering at all it sees. Before Jove reigned 

It loved our sister Asia, and it came 

Each leisure hour to drink the liquid light 

Out of her eyes, for which it said it thirsted 

As one bit by a dipsas, and with her 

It made its childish confidence, and told her 

All it had known or seen, for it saw much, 

Yet idly reasoned what it saw ; and called her, 330 

For whence it sprung it knew not, nor do I, 

Mother, dear mother. 

The Spirit of the Earth {running to Asia). 
Mother, dearest mother ; 
May I then talk with thee as I was wont? 
May I then hide my eyes in thy soft arms, 
After thy looks have made them tired of joy? 
May I then play beside thee the long noons, 
When work is none in the bright silent air? 

Asia. 
I love thee, gentlest being, and henceforth 
Can cherish thee unenvied : speak, I pray : 
Thy simple talk once solaced, now delights. 340 

Spirit of the Earth. 
Mother, I am grown wiser, though a child 
Cannot be wise like thee, within this day ; 



90 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act hi. 

And happier too ; happier and wiser both. 

Thou knowest that toads, and snakes, and loathly worms, 

And venomous and malicious beasts, and boughs 

That bore ill berries in the woods, were ever 

An hindrance to my walks o'er the green world : 

And that, among the haunts of humankind, 

Hard-featured men, or with proud, angry looks, 

Or cold, staid gait, or false and hollow smiles, 350 

Or the dull sneer of self-loved ignorance, 

Or other such foul masks, with which ill thoughts 

Hide that fair being whom we spirits call man ; 

And women too, ugliest of all things evil, 

(Tho' fair, even in a world where thou art fair, 

When good and kind, free and sincere like thee,) 

When false or frowning made me sick at heart 

To pass them, tho' they slept, and I unseen. 

Well, my path lately lay thro' a great city 

Into the woody hills surrounding it : 360 

A sentinel was sleeping at the gate : 

When there was heard a sound, so loud, it shook 

The towers amid the moonlight, yet more sweet 

Than any voice but thine, sweetest of all ; 

A long, long sound, as it would never end : 

And all the inhabitants leapt suddenly 

Out of their rest, and gathered in the streets, 

Looking in wonder up to Heaven, while yet 

The music pealed along. I hid myself 

Within a fountain in the public square, 370 

Where I lay like the reflex of the moon 

Seen in a wave under green leaves ; and soon 

Those ugly human shapes and visages 



scene iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 91 

Of which I spoke as having wrought me pain, 

Past floating thro' the air, and fading still 

Into the winds that scattered them ; and those 

From whom they past seemed mild and lovely forms 

After some foul disguise had fallen, and all 

Were somewhat changed, and after brief surprise 

And greetings of delighted wonder, all 380 

Went to their sleep again : and when the dawn 

Came, would'st thou think that toads, and snakes, and 

efts, 
Could e'er be beautiful? yet so they were, 
And that with little change of shape or hue : 
All things had put their evil nature off: 
I cannot tell my joy, when o'er a lake 
Upon a drooping bough with night-shade twined, 
I saw two azure halcyons clinging downward 
And thinning one bright bunch of amber berries, 
With quick long beaks, and in the deep there lay 390 

Those lovely forms imaged as in a sky ; 
So with my thoughts full of these happy changes, 
We meet again, the happiest change of all. 

Asia. 

And never will we part, till thy chaste sister 
Who guides the frozen and inconstant moon 
Will look on thy more warm and equal light 
Till her heart thaw like flakes of April snow 
And love thee. 

Spirit of the Earth. 

What ; as Asia loves Prometheus ? 



92 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act hi. 

Asia. 
Peace, wanton, thou art yet not old enough. 
Think ye by gazing on each other's eyes 400 

To multiply your lovely selves, and nil 
With sphered fires the interlunar air? 

Spirit of the Earth. 
Nay, mother, while my sister trims her lamp 
'Tis hard I should go darkling. 

Asia. 

Listen ; look ! 
[The Spirit of the Hour enters. 

Prometheus. 
We feel what thou hast heard and seen : yet speak. 

Spirit of the Hour. 
Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled 
The abysses of the sky and the wide earth, 
There was a change : the impalpable thin air 
And the all-circling sunlight were transformed, 
As if the sense of love dissolved in them 410 

Had folded itself round the sphered world. 
My vision then grew clear, and I could see 
Into the mysteries of the universe : 
Dizzy as with delight I floated down, 
Winnowing the lightsome air with languid plumes, 
My coursers sought their birthplace in the sun, 
Where they henceforth will live exempt from toil 
Pasturing flowers of vegetable fire. 
And where my moonlike car will stand within 



scene iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 93 

A temple, gazed upon by Phidian forms 420 

Of thee, and Asia, and the Earth, and me, 

And you fair nymphs looking the love we feel ; 

In memory of the tidings it has borne ; 

Beneath a dome fretted with graven flowers, 

Poised on twelve columns of resplendent stone, 

And open to the bright and liquid sky. 

Yoked to it by an amphisbenic snake 

The likeness of those winged steeds will mock 

The flight from which they find repose. Alas, 

Whither has wandered now my partial tongue 430 

When all remains untold which ye would hear? 

As I have said I floated to the earth : 

It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss 

To move, to breathe, to be ; I wandering went 

Among the haunts and dwellings of mankind, 

And first was disappointed not to see 

Such mighty change as I had felt within, 

Expressed in outward things ; but soon I looked, 

And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walked 

One with the other even as spirits do, 440 

None fawned, none trampled ; hate, disdain, or fear, 

Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows 

No more inscribed, as o'er the gate of hell, 

" All hope abandon ye who enter here ; " 

None frowned, none trembled, none with eager fear 

Gazed on another's eye of cold command, 

Until the subject of a tyrant's will 

Became, worse fate, the abject of his own, 

Which spurred him, like an outspent horse, to death. 

None wrought his lips in truth-entangling lines 450 



94 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act in. 

Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak ; 

None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heart 

The sparks of love and hope till there remained 

Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed, 

And the wretch crept a vampire among men, 

Infecting all with his own hideous ill ; 

None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk 

Which makes the heart deny the yes it breathes, 

Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy 

With such a self-mistrust as has no name. 460 

And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind 

As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew 

On the wide earth, past ; gentle radiant forms, 

From custom's evil taint exempt and pure ; 

Speaking the wisdom once they could not think, 

Looking emotions once they feared to feel, 

And changed to all which once they dared not be, 

Yet being now, made earth like heaven ; nor pride, 

Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill-shame, 

The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall, 470 

Spoilt the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love. 

Thrones, altars, judgment-seats, and prisons, — wherein, 

And beside which, by wretched men were borne 

Sceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomes 

Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance, — 

Were like those monstrous and barbaric shapes, 

The ghosts of a no more-remembered fame, 

Which, from their unworn obelisks, look forth 

In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs 

Of those who were their conquerors, mouldering round. 480 



scene iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 95 

Those imaged, to the pride of kings and priests, 

A dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide 

As is the world it wasted, — and are now 

But an astonishment. Even so the tools 

And emblems of its last captivity, 

Amid the dwellings of the peopled earth, 

Stand, not o'erthrown, but unregarded now. 

And those foul shapes, abhorred by god and man, 

Which, under many a name and many a form 

Strange, savage, ghastly, dark and execrable, 490 

Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world, — 

And which the nations, panic-stricken, served 

With blood, and hearts broken by long hope, and love 

Dragged to his altars soiled and garlandless, 

And slain among men's unreclaiming tears, 

Flattering the thing they feared, which fear was hate, — 

Frown, mouldering fast, o'er their abandoned shrines. 

The painted veil, — by those who were, called life, — 

Which mimicked, as with colours idly spread, 

All men believed and hoped, is torn aside. 500 

The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains, — 

Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man : 

Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless, 

Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king 

Over himself; just, gentle, wise : but man. 

Passionless ? no : — yet free from guilt or pain, — 

Which were, for his will made or suffered them, 

Nor yet exempt, tho' ruling them like slaves, 

From chance, and death, and mutability, — 

The clogs of that which else might oversoar 510 

The loftiest star of unascended heaven, 

Pinnacled dim in the intense inane. 



ACT IV. 

Scene, A part of the Forest near the Cave of Prometheus. 
Panthea and Ione are sleeping: they awaken gradually 
during the first Song. 

VOICE of Unseen Spirits. 

The pale stars are gone ! 
For the sun, their swift shepherd, 
To their folds them compelling, 
In the depths of the dawn, 
Hastes, in meteor- eclipsing array, and they flee 
Beyond his blue dwelling, 
As fawns flee the leopard. 
But where are ye ? 

A train of dark Forms and Shadows passes by confusedly, 
singing. 
Here, oh, here : 

We bear the bier 10 

Of the Father of many a cancelled year ! 
Spectres we 
Of the dead Hours be, 
We bear Time to his tomb in eternity. 

Strew, oh, strew 
Hair, not yew ! 
Wet the dusty pall with tears, not dew ! 
96 



[act i v.J PR OME THE US UNB O UND. 97 

Be the faded flowers 
Of Death's bare bowers 
Spread on the corpse of the King of Hours ! 20 

Haste, oh, haste ! 

As shades are chased, 
Trembling, by day, from heaven's blue waste. 

We melt away, 

Like dissolving spray, 
From the children of a diviner day, 

With the lullaby 

Of winds that die 
On the bosom of their own harmony ! 

Ione. 
What dark forms were they? 30 

Panthea. 
The past Hours weak and grey, 
With the spoil which their toil 
Raked together 
From the conquest but One could foil. 

Ione. 
Have they past? 

^ Panthea. 

They have past ; 
They outspeeded the blast, 
While 'tis said, they are fled : 

Ione. 
Whither, oh, whither? 



98 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act iv. 

Panthea. 
To the dark, to the past, to the dead. 

VOICE of Unseen Spirits. 

Bright clouds float in heaven, 40 

Dew-stars gleam on earth, 
Waves assemble on ocean, 
They are gathered and driven 
By the storm of delight, by the panic of glee ! 
They shake with emotion, 
They dance in their mirth. 
But where are ye ? 

The pine boughs are singing 
Old songs with new gladness, 
The billows and fountains 50 

Fresh music are flinging, 
Like the notes of a spirit from land and from sea ; 
The storms mock the mountains 
With the thunder of gladness. 
But where are ye ? 

IONE. 

What charioteers are these ? 

Panthea. 

Where are their chariots ? 

Semichorus of Hours. 
The voice of the Spirits of Air and of Earth 

Have drawn back the figured curtain of sleep 
Which covered our being and darkened our birth 

In the deep. 



act iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 99 

A Voice. 
In the deep ? 

Semichorus II. 

Oh, below the deep. 60 

Semichorus I. 
An hundred ages we had been kept 

Cradled in visions of hate and care, 
And each one who waked as his brother slept, 

Found the truth — 

Semichorus II. 

Worse than his visions were ! 

Semichorus I. 
We have heard the lute of Hope in sleep ; 

We have known the voice of Love in dreams, 
We have felt the wand of Power, and leap — 

Semichorus II. 
As the billows leap in the morning beams ! 

Chorus. 
Weave the dance on the floor of the breeze, 

Pierce with song heaven's silent light, 70 

Enchant the day that too swiftly flees, 

To check its flight ere the cave of night. 

Once the hungry Hours were hounds 

Which chased the day like a bleeding deer, 

And it limped and stumbled with many wounds 
Through the nightly dells of the desart year. 



100 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act iv. 

But now, oh weave the mystic measure 
Of music, and dance, and shapes of light, 

Let the Hours, and the spirits of might and pleasure, 
Like the clouds and sunbeams, unite. 

A Voice. 

Unite 80 

Panthea. 

See, where the Spirits of the human mind 

Wrapped in sweet sounds, as in bright veils, approach. 

Chorus of Spirits. 

We join the throng 

Of the dance and the song, 
By the whirlwind of gladness borne along ; 

As the flying-fish leap 

From the Indian deep, 
And mix with the sea-birds, half asleep. 

Chorus of Hours. 
Whence come ye, so wild and so fleet, 
For sandals of lightning are on your feet, 90 

And your wings are soft and swift as thought, 
And your eyes are as love which is veiled not ? 

Chorus of Spirits of the Mind. 

We come from the mind 

Of human kind, 
Which was late so dusk, and obscene, and blind, 

Now 'tis an ocean 

Of clear emotion, 
A heaven of serene and mighty motion. 



act iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

From that deep abyss 

Of wonder and bliss, 
Whose caverns are crystal palaces ; 

From those skiey towers 

Where Thought's crowned powers 
Sit watching your dance, ye happy Hours ! 

From the dim recesses 

Of woven caresses, 
Where lovers catch ye by your loose tresses j 

From the azure isles, 

Where sweet Wisdom smiles, 
Delaying your ships with her siren wiles. 

From the temples high 

Of Man's ear and eye, 
Roofed over Sculpture and Poesy ; 

From the murmurings 

Of the unsealed springs 
Where Science bedews his Daedal wings. 

Years after years, 

Through blood, and tears, 
And a thick hell of hatreds, and hopes, and fears ; 

We waded and flew, 

And the islets were few 
Where the bud-blighted flowers of happiness grew. 

Our feet now, every palm, 

Are sandalled with calm, 
And the dew of our wings is a rain of balm ; 

And, beyond our eyes, 

The human love lies 
Which makes all it gazes on Paradise. 



101 



102 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act iv. 

Chorus of Spirits and Hours. 
Then weave the web of the mystic measure ; 

From the depths of the sky and the ends of the earth, 130 
Come, swift Spirits of might and of pleasure, 

Fill the dance and the music of mirth, 
As the waves of a thousand streams rush by 
To an ocean of splendour and harmony ! 

Chorus of Spirits of the Mind. 

Our spoil is won, 

Our task is done, 
We are free to dive, or soar, or run ; 

Beyond and around, 

Or within the bound 
Which clips the world with darkness round, 140 

We'll pass the eyes 

Of the starry skies 
Into the hoar deep to colonize : 

Death, Chaos, and Night, 

From the sound of our flight, 
Shall flee, like mist from a tempest's might. 

And Earth, Air, and Light, 

And the Spirit of Might, 
Which drives round the stars in their fiery flight ; 

And Love, Thought, and Breath, 150 

The powers that quell Death, 
Wherever we soar shall assemble beneath. 

And our singing shall build 
In the void's loose field 
A world for the Spirit of Wisdom to wield ; 



act iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 103 

We will take our plan 
From the new world of man, 
And our work shall be called the Promethean. 

Chorus of Hours. 
Break the dance, and scatter the song ; 

Let some depart, and some remain. 160 

Semichorus I. 
We, beyond heaven, are driven along : 

Semichorus II. 
Us the enchantments of earth retain : 

Semichorus I. 
Ceaseless, and rapid, and fierce, and free, 
With the Spirits which build a new earth and sea, 
And a heaven where yet heaven could never be. 

Semichorus II. 
Solemn, and slow, and serene, and bright, 
Leading the Day and outspeeding the Night, 
With the powers of a world of perfect light. 

Semichorus I. 
We whirl, singing loud, round the gathering sphere, 
Till the trees, and the beasts, and the clouds appear 170 
From its chaos made calm by love, not fear. 

Semichorus II. 
We encircle the ocean and mountains of earth, 
And the happy forms of its death and birth 
Change to the music of our sweet mirth. 



104 PR OME THE US UNB O UND. [act iv. 

Chorus of Hours and Spirits. 

Break the dance, and scatter the song, 

Let some depart, and some remain, 
Wherever we fly we lead along 
In leashes, like starbeams, soft yet strong, 

The clouds that are heavy with love's sweet rain. 

Panthea. 
Ha ! they are gone ! 

Ione. 
Yet feel you no delight 180 

From the past sweetness? 

Panthea. 

As the bare green hill 
When some soft cloud vanishes into rain, 
Laughs with a thousand drops of sunny water 
To the unpavilioned sky ! 

Ione. 

Even whilst we speak 
New notes arise. What is that awful sound? 

Panthea. 
'Tis the deep music of the rolling world 
Kindling within the strings of the waved air, 
.Eolian modulations. 

Ione. 

Listen too, 
How every pause is filled with under-notes, 
Clear, silver, icy, keen awakening tones, 190 



act iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 105 

Which pierce the sense, and live within the soul, 
As the sharp stars pierce winter's crystal air 
And gaze upon themselves within the sea. 

Panthea. 

But see where through two openings in the forest 

Which hanging branches overcanopy, 

And where two runnels of a rivulet, 

Between the close moss violet-inwoven, 

Have made their path of melody, like sisters 

Who part with sighs that they may meet in smiles, 

Turning their dear disunion to an isle 200 

Of lovely grief, a wood of sweet sad thoughts ; 

Two visions of strange radiance float upon 

The ocean-like enchantment of strong sound, 

Which flows intenser, keener, deeper yet, 

Under the ground and through the windless air. 

Ione. 

I see a chariot like that thinnest boat, 

In which the mother of the months is borne 

By ebbing night into her western cave, 

When she upsprings from interlunar dreams, 

O'er which is curved an orblike canopy 210 

Of gentle darkness, and the hills and woods 

Distinctly seen through that dusk airy veil, 

Regard like shapes in an enchanter's glass ; 

Its wheels are solid clouds, azure and gold, 

Such as the genii of the thunder-storm 

Pile on the floor of the illumined sea 

When the sun rushes under it ; they roll 



106 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act iv. 

And move and grow as with an inward wind ; 

Within it sits a winged infant, white 

Its countenance, like the whiteness of bright snow, 220 

Its plumes are as feathers of sunny frost, 

Its limbs gleam white, through the wind-flowing folds 

Of its white robe, woof of setherial pearl. 

Its hair is white, the brightness of white light 

Scattered in strings; yet its two eyes are heavens 

Of liquid darkness, which the Deity 

Within seems pouring, as a storm is poured 

From jagged clouds, out of their arrowy lashes, 

Tempering the cold and radiant air around, 

With fire that is not brightness ; in its hand 230 

It sways a quivering moon-beam, from whose point 

A guiding power directs the chariot's prow 

Over its wheeled clouds, which as they roll 

Over the grass, and flowers, and waves, wake sounds, 

Sweet as a singing rain of silver dew. 

Panthea. - 

And from the other opening in the wood 

Rushes, with loud and whirlwind harmony, 

A sphere, which is as many thousand spheres, 

Solid as crystal, yet through all its mass 

Flow, as through empty space, music and light : 240 

Ten thousand orbs involving and involved, 

Purple and azure, white, green, and golden, 

Sphere within sphere ; and every space between 

Peopled with unimaginable shapes, 

Such as ghosts dream dwell in. the lampless deep, 

Yet each inter- transpicuous, and they whirl 



act iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 107 

Over each other with a thousand motions, 

Upon a thousand sightless axles spinning, 

And with the force of self-destroying swiftness, 

Intensely, slowly, solemnly roll on. 250 

Kindling with mingled sounds, and many tones, 

Intelligible words and music wild. 

With mighty whirl the multitudinous orb 

Grinds the bright brook into an azure mist 

Of elemental subtlety, like light ; 

And the wild odour of the forest flowers, 

The music of the living grass and air, 

The emerald light of leaf- entangled beams 

Round its intense yet self-conflicting speed, 

Seem kneaded into one aerial mass 260 

Which drowns the sense. Within the orb itself, 

Pillowed upon its alabaster arms, 

Like to a child o'erwearied with sweet toil, 

On its own folded wings and wavy hair, 

The Spirit of the Earth is laid asleep, 

And you can see its little lips are moving, 

Amid the changing light of their own smiles, 

Like one who talks of what he loves in dream. 

Ione. 
'Tis only mocking the orb's harmony. 

Panthea. 

And from a star upon its forehead, shoot, 270 

Like swords of azure fire, or golden spears 
With tyrant-quelling myrtle overtwined, 
Embleming heaven and earth united now, 



108 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act iv. 

Vast beams like spokes of some invisible wheel 

Which whirl as the orb whirls, swifter than thought, 

Filling the abyss with sun-like lightnings, 

And perpendicular now, and now transverse, 

Pierce the dark soil, and as they pierce and pass, 

Make bare the secrets of the earth's deep heart ; 

Infinite mine of adamant and gold, 280 

Valueless stones and unimagined gems, 

And caverns on crystalline columns poised 

With vegetable silver overspread ; 

Wells of unfathomed fire, and water-springs 

Whence the great sea, even as a child is fed, 

Whose vapours clothe earth's monarch mountain-tops 

With kingly, ermine snow. The beams flash on, 

And make appear the melancholy ruins 

Of cancelled cycles ; anchors, beaks of ships ; 

Planks turned to marble ; quivers, helms, and spears, 290 

And gorgon-headed targes, and the wheels 

Of scythed chariots, and the emblazonry 

Of trophies, standards, and armorial beasts, 

Round which Death laughed, sepulchred emblems 

Of dead destruction, ruin within ruin ! 

The wrecks beside of many a city vast, 

Whose population which the earth grew over 

Was mortal, but not human ; see, they lie, 

Their monstrous works and uncouth skeletons, 

Their statues, homes and fanes ; prodigious shapes 300 

Huddled in grey annihilation, split, 

Jammed in the hard, black deep ; and over these, 

The anatomies of unknown winged things, 

And fishes which were isles of living scale, 



act iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 109 

And serpents, bony chains, twisted around 

The iron crags, or within heaps of dust 

To which the tortuous strength of their last pangs 

Had crushed the iron crags ; and over these 

The jagged alligator, and the might 

Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which once 310 

Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores, 

And weed- overgrown continents of earth, 

Increased and multiplied like summer worms 

On an abandoned corpse, till the blue globe 

Wrapt deluge round it like a cloke, and they 

Yelled, gasped, and were abolished ; or some God 

Whose throne was in a comet, past, and cried, 

Be not ! And like my words they were no more. 

The Earth. 

The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness ! 

The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness, 320 

The vaporous exultation not to be confined ! 

Ha ! ha ! the animation of delight 

Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light, 
And bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind. 

The Moon. 

Brother mine, calm wanderer, 

Happy globe of land and air, 
Some Spirit is darted like a beam from thee, 

Which penetrates my frozen frame, 

And passes with the warmth of flame, 
With love, and odour, and deep melody 330 

Through me, through me ! 



110 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act iv. 

The Earth. 

Ha ! ha ! the caverns of my hollow mountains, 
My cloven fire- crags, sound-exulting fountains 

Laugh with a vast and inextinguishable laughter. 
The oceans, and the desarts, and the abysses, 
And the deep air's unmeasured wildernesses, 

Answer from all their clouds and billows, echoing after. 

They cry aloud as I do. Sceptred curse, 

Who all our green and azure universe 
Threatenedst to muffle round with black destruction, 

sending 340 

A solid cloud to rain hot thunder-stones, 

And splinter and knead down my children's bones, 
All I bring forth, to one void mass battering and blending — 

Until each crag-like tower, and storied column, 

Palace, and obelisk, and temple solemn, 
My imperial mountains crowned with cloud, and snow, 
and fire ; 

My sea-like forests, every blade and blossom 

Which finds a grave or cradle in my bosom, 
Were stamped by thy strong hate into a lifeless mire — 

How art thou sunk, withdrawn, covered, drunk up 350 

By thirsty nothing, as the brackish cup 
Drained by a desart-troop, a little drop for all ; 

And from beneath, around, within, above, 

Filling thy void annihilation, love 
Burst in like light on caves cloven by the thunder-ball. 



act iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. Ill 

The Moon. 
The snow upon my lifeless mountains 
Is loosened into living fountains, 
My solid oceans flow, and sing, and shine : 
A spirit from my heart bursts forth, 
It clothes with unexpected birth 360 

My cold bare bosom : Oh ! it must be thine 
On mine, on mine ! 

Gazing on thee, I feel, I know 

Green stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow, 
And living shapes upon my bosom move : 

Music is in the sea and air, 

Winged clouds soar here and there, 
Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of: 
'Tis love, all love ! 

The Earth. 

It interpenetrates my granite mass, 370 

Through tangled roots and trodden clay doth pass, 
Into the utmost leaves and delicatest flowers ; 

Upon the winds, among the clouds 'tis spread, 

It wakes a life in the forgotten dead, 
They breathe a spirit up from their obscurest bowers. 

And like a storm bursting its cloudy prison 
With thunder, and with whirlwind, has arisen 

Out of the lampless caves of unimagined being : 
With earthquake shock and swiftness making shiver 
Thought's stagnant chaos, unremoved for ever, 380 

Till hate, and fear, and pain, light-vanquished shadows, 
fleeing, 



112 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act iv. 

Leave Man, who was a many sided mirror, 
Which could distort to many a shade of error, 

This true fair world of things, a sea reflecting love ; 
Which over all his kind as the sun's heaven 
Gliding o'er ocean, smooth, serene, and even 

Darting from starry depths radiance and life, doth move, 

Leave Man, even as a leprous child is left, 

W T ho follows a sick beast to some warm cleft 
Of rocks, through which the might of healing springs 

is poured j 39 o 

Then when it wanders home with rosy smile, 

Unconscious, and its mother fears awhile 
It is a spirit, then, weeps on her child restored. 

Man, oh, not men ! a chain of linked thought, 

Of love and might to be divided not, 
Compelling the elements with adamantine stress ; 

As the Sun rules, even with a tyrant's gaze, 

The unquiet republic of the maze 
Of planets, struggling fierce towards heaven's free wil- 
derness. 

Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul, 400 

Whose nature is its own divine control, 
Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea ; 

Familiar acts are beautiful through love ; 

Labour, and pain, and grief, in life's green grove 
Sport like tame beasts, none knew how gentle they could 
be ! 

His will, with all mean passions, bad delights, 
And selfish cares, its trembling satellites, 



act iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 113 

A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey, 

Is as a tempest-winged ship, whose helm 

Love rules through waves which dare not overwhelm, 410 
Forcing life's wildest shores to own its sovereign sway. 

All things confess his strength. Through the cold 

mass 
Of marble and of colour his dreams pass ; 
Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their 
children wear ; 
Language is a perpetual orphic song, 
Which rules with Daedal harmony a throng 
Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and shape- 
less were. 

The lightning is his slave ; heaven's utmost deep 

Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep 
They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on ! 420 

The tempest is his steed, he strides the air ; 

And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare, 
Heaven, hast thou secrets ? Man unveils me ; I have 
none. 

The Moon. 

The shadow of white death has past 

From my path in heaven at last, 
A clinging shroud of solid frost and sleep ; 

And through my newly-woven bowers, 

Wander happy paramours, 
Less mighty, but as mild as those who keep 

Thy vales more deep. 430 



114 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act iv. 

The Earth. 

As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold 
A half unfrozen dew-globe, green, and gold, 

And crystalline, till it becomes a winged mist, 
And wanders up the vault of the blue day, 
Outlives the noon, and on the sun's last ray 

Hangs o'er the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst. 

The Moon. 

Thou art folded, thou art lying 

In the light which is undying 
Of thine own joy, and heaven's smile divine ; 

All suns and constellations shower 440 

On thee a light, a life, a power 
Which doth array thy sphere ; thou pourest thine 
On mine, on mine ! 

The Earth. 

I spin beneath my pyramid of night, 

Which points into the heavens dreaming delight, 
Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep ; 

As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing, 

Under the shadow of his beauty lying, 
Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth 
keep. 

The Moon. 

As in the soft and sweet eclipse, 450 

When soul meets soul on lovers' lips, 
High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull ; 



act iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 115 

So when thy shadow falls on me, 
Then am I mute and still, by thee 
Covered ; of thy love, Orb most beautiful, 
Full, oh, too full ! 

Thou art speeding round the sun, 

Brightest world of many a one ; 

Green and azure sphere which shinest 

With a light which is divinest 460 

Among all the lamps of Heaven 

To whom life and light is given ; 

I, thy crystal paramour 

Borne beside thee by a power 

Like the polar Paradise, 

Magnet-like, of lovers' eyes ; 

I, a most enamoured maiden 

Whose weak brain is overladen 

With the pleasure of her love, 

Maniac-like around thee move 470 

Gazing, an insatiate bride, 

On thy form from every side 

Like a Maenad, round the cup 

Which Agave lifted up 

In the weird Cadmsean forest. 

Brother, wheresoe'er thou soarest 

I must hurry, whirl and follow 

Through the heavens wide and hollow 

Sheltered by the warm embrace 

Of thy soul from hungry space, 480 

Drinking from thy sense and sight 

Beauty, majesty, and might, 



116 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act iv. 

As a lover or a cameleon 

Grows like what it looks upon, 

As a violet's gentle eye 

Gazes on the azure sky 
Until its hue grows like what it beholds, 

As a grey and watery mist 

Glows like solid amethyst 
Athwart the western mountain it enfolds, 490 

When the sunset sleeps 
Upon its snow. 

The Earth. 
And the weak day weeps 
That it should be so. 
Oh, gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight 
Falls on me like the clear and tender light 
Soothing the seaman, borne the summer night 

Through isles for ever calm ; 
Oh, gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce 
The caverns of my pride's deep universe, 500 

Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce 
Made wounds which need thy balm. 

Panthea. 
I rise as from a bath of sparkling water, 
A bath of azure light, among dark rocks, 
Out of the stream of sound. 

Ione. 

Ah me ! sweet sister, 
The stream of sound has ebbed away from us, 



act I v.J PR OME THE US UNB O UND. i 1 7 

And you pretend to rise out of its wave, 
Because your words fall like the clear, soft dew 
Shaken from a bathing wood-nymph's limbs and hair. 

Panthea. 

Peace ! peace ! A mighty Power which is as darkness, 510 

Is rising out of Earth, and from the sky 

Is showered like night, and from within the air 

Bursts, like eclipse which had been gathered up 

Into the pores of sunlight : the bright visions, 

Wherein the singing spirits rode and shone, 

Gleam like pale meteors through a watery night. 

Ione. 
There is a sense of words upon mine ear. 

Panthea. 
An universal sound like words : Oh, list ! 

Demogorgon. 

Thou, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul, 

Sphere of divinest shapes and harmonies, 520 

Beautiful orb ! gathering as thou dost roll 

The love which paves thy path along the skies : 

The Earth. 
I hear : I am as a drop of dew that dies. 

Demogorgon. 
Thou, Moon, which gazest on the nightly Earth 
With wonder, as it gazes upon thee ; 



] 18 PR OME THE US UNB O UND. [act iv. 

Whilst each to men, and beasts, and the swift birth 
Of birds, is beauty, love, calm, harmony : 

The Moon. 
I hear : I am a leaf shaken by thee ! 

Demogorgon. 

Ye kings of suns and stars, Daemons and Gods, 

Ethereal Dominations, who possess 530 

Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes 

Beyond Heaven's constellated wilderness : 

A VOICE from above. 

Our great Republic hears, we are blest, and bless. 

Demogorgon. 

Ye happy dead, whose beams of brightest verse 
Are clouds to hide, not colours to pourtray, 

Whether your nature is that universe 
Which once ye saw and suffered — 

A VOICE from beneath. 

Or as they 
Whom we have left, we change and pass away. 

Demogorgon. 

Ye elemental Genii, who have homes 

From man's high mind even to the central stone 540 
Of sullen lead ; from Heaven's star-fretted domes 

To the dull weed some sea-worm battens on : 



act iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 119 

A Confused Voice. 
We hear : thy words waken Oblivion. 

Demogorgon. 

Spirits, whose homes are flesh : ye beasts and birds, 
Ye worms, and fish ; ye living leaves and buds ; 

Lightning and wind ; and ye untameable herds, 
Meteors and mists, which throng air's solitudes : 

A Voice. 
Thy voice to us is wind among still woods. 

Demogorgon. 

Man, who wert once a despot and a slave ; 

A dupe and a deceiver ; a decay ; 550 

A traveller from the cradle to the grave 

Through the dim night of this immortal day : 

All. 
Speak : thy strong words may never pass away. 

Demogorgon. 

This is the day, which down the void abysm 

At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism, 

And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep : 
Love, from its awful throne of patient power 
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour 

Of dead endurance, from the slippery, steep, 
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs 560 

And folds over the world its healing wings. 



120 PR OME THE US UNB O UND. [act iv.] 

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance, 
These are the seals of that most firm assurance 

Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength ; 
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity, 
Mother of many acts and hours, should free 

The serpent that would clasp her with his length ; 
These are the spells by which to re-assume 
An empire o'er the disentangled doom. 

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite ; 570 

To forgive wrongs darker than death or night ; 

To defy Power, which seems omnipotent ; 
To love, and bear ; to hope till Hope creates 
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates ; 

Neither to change, nor faulter, nor repent ; 
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be 
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free ; 
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory. 



SUGGESTIONS 

TOWARDS A COMPARISON OF THE PROMETHEUS 
UNBOUND WITH THE PROMETHEUS BOUND OF 
yESCHYLUS. 

We know that Shelley, though not an accurate Greek 
scholar, read Greek with eagerness and ease. Of the period 
during which the Prometheus Unbound was written, Mrs. 
Shelley tells us : " The Greek tragedians were now his most 
familiar companions, and the sublime majesty of yEschylus 
filled him with wonder and delight." Prometheus Bound 
had a special attraction for Shelley, whose audacious soul, 
always sympathetic with rebellion, was inevitably drawn 
towards the most audacious expression of Greek genius. 
The Prometheus Unbound is steeped in the spirit of ^Eschy- 
lus. All the more striking is the originality of Shelley, both 
in conception and in treatment. There is no trace of 
plagiarism in his manner, yet the whole drama reveals how 
deeply and in what subtle ways one great imaginative writer 
may influence another. 

In form, the Prometheus Unbound is more akin to the 
Greek type of drama than to the Shakespearean type; for, as 
in the Greek, the lyrical element has nearly or quite as much 
structural importance as the blank verse. Shelley has 
indeed the modern division into acts ; but an equally essen- 

121 



122 * PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

tial division is signalled by the great choral passages. The 
modernness of Shelley's drama is however evident in the 
more subtle and free interfusion of lyric with recitative, and 
the far greater elaboration of the personages and function of 
the chorus. In ^Eschylus, the Chorus is a band of Sea- 
nymphs, who wing their way upward from the ocean to 
console Prometheus, and settle at the rock at his feet 
(lines 128-135 ; 277-282). In Shelley, the chief characters 
who sustain the Chorus are also Sea-nymphs, — lone and 
Panthea, who, like the nymphs of ^Eschylus, sit with droop- 
ing wings on the, cliff Jbelow. Prometheus^ angl cheer him 
with their sympathy. But with the songs of these Daughters 
of Ocean are blended the voices of the whole creation, — 
Spirits of Nature, of the Human Mind, of unguessed Powers 
of Evil, — who fill with music every pause in the drama. 
Moreover, in Shelley the Chorus-characters are far more 
closely interwoven with the structure of the drama than in 
yEschylus. The chorus of the Prometheus Bound holds the 
simple position of the observer, and its function is to 
express emotional sympathy : the chorus-voices of the Pro- 
metheus Unbound again and again further the action. 

Indeed, the structure of the modern drama is at every 
point both more complex and more organic than that of the 
Greek drama. There are more leading characters, and 
their relation to each other is less purely incidental. 
^Eschylus suggests indeed a fine character-contrast between 
Prometheus and Io : the Titan suffering from the hate of 
Zeus, the woman from his love, the Titan an image of proud 
and still stoicism, the woman of restless and uncontrolled 
passion. But, as far as the story is concerned, Prometheus 
and Io are bound together simply by the mechanical tie of 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 123 

common suffering, and by the prophecy of the age to come, 
when Herakles, the descendant of Io, shall release the 
Titan. Prometheus and Asia are far more deeply united. 
Their relation is an essential fact in the drama, and their 
destinies are one, alike in the external and in the spiritual 
narrative. The subordinate characters also all play a 
necessary part in the action. This closer structural unity of 
Shelley's drama is entirely modern. 

The conception of the central character, again, differs 
widely in the two dramas. The Prometheus of y^Eschylus is 
by no means an ideal hero, even to us, who have with the 
Rebel an instinctive sympathy greater than the Greek would 
have dared to acknowledge. He is fiery, untamed, revenge- 
ful, answering taunt with taunt. In the Prometheus of Shel- 
ley, all that can lessen our sympathy is removed. The 
strength remains, but the bitterness has vanished, merged in 
an all-embracing pity. The Titan of ^schylus exclaims : — 

nP0MH9ETS. 
L. 975* « 7r ^- ( i> Aoyw rovs 7rdvTas i^Oaipoi Oeovs, 
ocrot TraOovTts ev kclkovol // ckSikojs. 

EPMHS. 
kXvo) <t iyto jxefx-qvor ov (TfxtKpav vocrov. 1 

i Prometheus. 
I tell thee, I loathe the universal gods, 
Who for the good I gave them rendered back 
The ill of their injustice. 

Hermes. 

Thou art mad — 
I hear thee raving, Titan, at the fever-height. 



124 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

IIPOMHeETS. 
voaoL/JL av, d vocrrj/xa tovs i)(9povs cnvyeiv. 

Shelley's Prometheus no longer " loathes the universal gods." 

He says : — 

I hate no more 
As then, ere misery made me wise. 

Yet, in spite of this new magnanimity, the Titan of Shelley 
has fully as much of fine scorn and legitimate defiance as the 
Titan of ^Eschylus. Compare Shelley, I. 401-406, with^Es- 
chylus, 937-940. 

Let others flatter Crime, where it sits throned 
In brief omnipotence : — secure are they, . . . 

I wait, 
Enduring thus, the retributive hour, 
Which, since we spake is even nearer now. 

ae^ov, Trpoarevyov, Ounrre rbv Kparovvr aeL 
i/xol 8' eXacraov Z^vos rj fxrjhev /xeAei 
BpaTO), KpareLTU) rovSe tov fipayyv xpovov 
O7rcos OiXet ' Bapov yap ovk ao£ei Oeois. 1 

We may, if we like, conceive the hero of the later drama 
to be the same as the hero of the earlier, disciplined by 

Prometheus. 
If it be madness to abhor my foes, 
May I be mad ! 

1 Reverence thou, 
Adore thou, flatter thou, whomever reigns, 
Whenever reigning — but for me, your Zeus 
Is less than nothing ! Let him act and reign 
His brief hour out, according to his will — 
He will not, therefore, rule the gods too long ! 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 125 

aeons of pain. Or, we may say that Shelley selected the 
noblest elements alone in the Prometheus of yEschylus, and 
developed these elements into a grand and harmonious con- 
ception. For there are very noble suggestions in the elder 
Prometheus. Calm and dignified lines succeed outbursts of 
tempestuous hate, affecting us like still water after angry seas. 
The Prometheus sung by Shelley is he who is hailed by Io, — 

L. 613. w kolvov co<£eA.?7/xa, 6vt)Tol(tlv <f>avel<s, 

rXrjfxov UpcofxrjOev. 1 

Almost we may say that the Prometheus of ^Eschylus is 
the parent of two widely differing conceptions : the Satan of 
Milton, and the Prometheus of Shelley. In Milton, the glory 
is even more dimmed than in ^Eschylus by hate and scorn ; 
in Shelley, the nobler elements have conquered, and the 
Titan is proud indeed, but pure from evil taint. 

Not only the conception of Prometheus, but the whole 
conception of the drama is in Shelley touched to modern- 
ness. This is especially evident in the relation between 
Prometheus and Asia. The broken yet ideal communion 
between Man and the Spirit of Nature was unthought of 
by the Greek. The use made by Shelley of the idea in 
the old myth, that Jupiter derived all his power from Pro- 
metheus, subserves in an interesting way Shelley's peculiar 
philosophy, and gives us, in place of the external tyrant 
of yEschylus, a mere emanation from the human mind. In 
^Eschylus, salvation is to be wrought by submission and 
compromise ; in Shelley, by revolution and by love. The 

1 O common Help of all men, known of all, 
O miserable [or enduring] Prometheus. 



126 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

central fact of the Prometheus Bound, as of every Greek 
drama, is 'AvdyKrj — Necessity. 

L. 105. to rrjs avdyKrjs ear dhiqpiTov crOevos. 

In spite of the intellectual fatalism of Shelley, the central 
thought of the English drama is freedom, — man's control 
over his own destiny. Finally, the whole spiritual idea is far 
clearer in Shelley's mind than in the mind of /Eschylus. 
We instinctively feel, in the Prometheus Bound, either that 
the poet conceals from his hearers an esoteric truth, which 
he dares to suggest by dark hints only, or else that he is 
himself held in the grasp of a conception greater than he 
fully understands. In Shelley, the rebellious note is in no 
wise suppressed. We feel him to be in full possession of his 
own thought, and if the thought is obscure to us, the fault 
does not lie with the poet. 

The direct comparisons between the two dramas are 
naturally confined in the main to the first act of Shelley, 
as this is the only part which repeats in any degree the sit- 
uation of u^Eschylus. The scene here is much the same, — 
the high mountain- wall, the nailed Titan, the ocean spread 
below. We know how profoundly Shelley's imagination was 
affected by the setting of the Prometheus Bound ; we know 
also that shortly before writing his own drama he had been 
travelling among the finest scenery of the Alps and of North- 
ern Italy. He writes, in his journal, March 26, 1818: — 
" After dinner we ascended Les Echelles, winding along a 
road cut through perpendicular rocks, of immense elevation. 
. . . The rocks, which cannot be less than a thousand feet 
in perpendicular height, sometimes overhang the road on 
each side, and almost shut out the sky. The scene is like 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 127 

that described in the Prometheus of yEschylus : — vast rifts 
and caverns in the granite precipices ; wintry mountains 
with ice and snow above ; the loud sounds of unseen waters 
within the caverns, and walls of toppling rocks, only to be 
scaled as he describes, by the winged chariot of the ocean 
nymphs." Reminiscences of the Alps and of ^Eschylus meet 
in the scenery of the Prometheus Unbound. 

The passive elements introduced in the description of the 
scene are the same, — the vast height, the remoteness and 
desolation. Compare with Shelley, I. 1-23. 

L. 1. )(6ov6<s fxkv ets TrjXovpbv yKOfxev irihov 
^KvO-qv is olfxov, afiarov eis iprjfJLiav. 1 

L. 20. ... a.7rav0pui7rio 7raytp 

Iv ovre <ft(ovr]v ovre tov p,opcf>r)v fipoTiov 

" t 2 
oif/ec. 

L. 270. . . . iprjpLov roOS' ayeirovos 7rayou.° 

L. 141. ... irpocnropiraTos 

rrjcroe <£apayyos ctkottIXols iv aKpois 
(frpovpav at,rj\ov o^ryo-co. 4 



1 We reach the utmost limit of the earth, 
The Scythian track, the desert without man. 

2 . . . this rocky height unclomb by man, 
Where never human voice nor face shall find 
Out thee who lov'st them ! 

3 Doomed to this drear hill, and no neighboring 
Of any life. 

4 Transfixed with the fang 
Of a fetter, I hang 
On the high-jutting rocks of this fissure, and keep 
An uncoveted watch o'er the world and the deep. 



128 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

L. 157. vvv 8' aWeptov Ktwyjx 6 TaAas 
i)(OpoL<s €7rc)(apTa TriirovOa.} 

L. 113. V7rai9pLos Seoyxoun 7racrcraA£UTos an>. 2 

L. 269. . . . 7r/3os TrerpaLs ireSapaioLs. 3 

See also lines four and five. 

L. 15. ... cf>dpayyL irpos 8vcr^et/xepa). 4 

L. 562. ... xaAivots €v 7rerpiVotcrtv 

^ei/^a^Ojaevov. 5 

L. 22. ... (TTa^etiro? 8' yjXlov ^>o[jirj cpXoyL 
Xpota? d/u.ea//et5 av#os. 6 

Compare Shelley I. 383-5 : — 

. . . whether the Sun 
Split my parched skin, or in the moony night 
The crystal-winged snow cling round my hair. 

Shelley's " crystal-winged " snow finds exact parallel in 
.^Eschylus' " XevK07TTep(o vi<£a8i " (993). 

1 But now the winds sing through and shake 
The hurtling chains wherein I hang, — 
And I, in my naked sorrows, make 

Much mirth for my enemy. 

2 Hung here in fetters, 'neath the blanching sky! 

3 . . . against such skiey rocks. 

4 ... up this storm-rent chasm. 

5 And who is he that writhes, I see, 

In the rock-hung chain? 

6 . . . thy beauty's flower, 
Scorched in the sun's clear heat, shall fade away. 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 129 

It is, however, noticeable, that in Shelley we find constant 
references to the snow, — avalanches, icy peaks glittering in 
the sunlight, etc., and that such references are with one or 
two exceptions unknown in ^schylus. The difference is 
probably due to the different character of the scenery in 
Switzerland and in Greece. It may be suggested in passing 
that if the student wishes to feel the absence of color in 
Greek poetry, he cannot do better than to turn from the 
Prometheus of ^Eschylus to the Prometheus of Shelley. 

The active elements in the setting are often the same, — 
the earthquake, the vulture, the wind and whirlwind (Shelley, 
I.34-44; ^Eschylus, 1016-1025, 1085-1089). Sometimes 
the English here seems like a mere transcription of the 
Greek ; Shelley would hardly have called the vulture 
"winged hound," had not /Eschylus used the expression, 
Trvrjvos kvcov. There are one or two other descriptive pas- 
sages in the poem in which the Greek is very closely fol- 
lowed. Compare yEschylus, 

L. 23. ... ao-fxevit) Se crot 

■yj TTOLKiXtLixoyv vv£ aTTOKpyxf/eL <£aos 
7rd)(yY}V & ewav rjXios 0"Ke8a 7raA.11/, 1 

with Shelley, 

Act I., L. 44. And yet to me welcome is day and night 

Whether one breaks the hoar frost of the morn, 
Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs 
The leaden-coloured east; 

1 Night shall come up with garniture of stars 
To comfort thee with shadow, and the sun 
Disperse with retrickt beams the morning-frosts. 



130 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

also ^schylus, 

L. 1043. 7rp6s ravr €7r' ifxol pnrTecrOa) fxkv 

irvpos a/JLcprjKrjS /36<TTpv)(OSi aWrjp 8' 

Ipedi^icrOiM 

fipovrf} acpaKeXto r aypiwv dve/xwv ' 

yOova 8" €K TTvOpiivoiv aureus petals 

7rvevp.a KpaoatvoL, 

Kvp,a Se 7tovtov rpa^ct poOto) 

^uy^cocretev tu)v t ovpavimv 

acrTpwv Slooovs, . . . 
with Shelley, 
Act I., L. 165. ... the sea 

Was lifted by strange tempest, and new fire 

From earthquake-rifted mountains of bright snow 

Shook its portentous hair beneath Heaven's frown; 

Lightning and Inundation vexed the plains. 

In spite of these close parallelisms, the difference in the 
treatment of the scene is very marked in the two dramas. 
The modern attitude towards nature is evident in Shelley, 
both in the greater fulness and detail of treatment and in 
the greater spirituality of conception. The austere and 
bleak simplicity of ^Eschylus is as effective in its way as the 
brilliant word-painting of Shelley; yet the modern poet 

1 Let the locks of the lightning, all bristling and whitening, 

Flash, coiling me round ! 
While the aether goes surging 'neath thunder and scourging 

Of wild winds unbound ! 
Let the blast of the firmament whirl from its place 

The earth rooted below, 
And the brine of the ocean in rapid emotion. 

Be it driven in the face 
Of the stars up in heaven, as they walk to and fro ! 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 131 

gives us some details which we could ill afford to miss, as 
where the plain iron chains of the Greek are transformed 
into vast and glittering glaciers, which bind the Titan to the 
rock. But it is noticeable that although the physical setting 
is elaborated by Shelley, it is on the whole less emphasized 
than in ^Eschylus. Shelley passes the different elements of 
the physical torture in rapid summary in the first monologue, 
and then escapes, for the remainder of the act, into the 
region of purely spiritual pain. We feel indeed that through 
every line spoken by the Titan of yEschylus there breathes 
the pain of rebellion, the primary and simple passion of 
angry pride ; but no passage is found remotely suggestive of 
such complex and exalted sources of suffering as are opened 
to Prometheus by Shelley's Furies ; and hardly any causes 
of inward pain are directly stated, though the "scorn" and 
"despair" of Shelley are faintly suggested in such passages of 
yEschylus as 98-114, 544-551, 152-159. The climax of 
agony in the Greek is the outburst of the rage of the elements 
at the very end of the drama. The Greek drama, as com- 
pared with the English, is certainly external. 

Turning away from the general consideration of the scene 
to the closer search for parallel passages in the dramatic 
development, we find at once that the opening invocation of 
Shelley is almost a direct translation from the Greek. Com- 
pare Shelley, I. 25-29, 

" I ask the Earth, have not the Mountains felt? 
I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun, 
Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm, 
Heaven's ever-changing shadow, spread below, 
Have its deaf waves not heard my agony ? 
Ah me, alas, pain, pain ever, for ever." 



132 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

with ^Eschylus, 

L. 88. to Sios alOrjp Kal Tayyirrepoi ttvool 

TTorajxoiv re irrjyal, ttovtlwv tc kvjxolto)v 
avr)piOp,ov yiXaajxa, 7rapipirJT6p re yrj, 
Kal tov TravoTTTrjV kvkXov rjXtov KaXG> ' 
i&eaOe fi ola 7rpos Oewv 7rdcr^o) 0e6<s. 

****** 
cpev <j>ev, to rrapov to t i-n-ep^opievov 
irrj^a o-revd\o), . . . 

This is the " large invocation " which, as Lanier says, 
" seems still to assault our physical ears, across the twenty 
odd centuries." 

No other broad parallel occurs till we reach the Curse 
uttered by the Phantasm of Jupiter. There is no one pas- 
sage in y^Eschylus corresponding to this Curse, nor is there 
the same stern assertion that evil is of necessity self-doomed ; 
but, in several great passages, we have the spirit of parts of 
the Curse perfectly reproduced. With the first stanza, and 
part of the second, compare lines 989-996. 

ovk £0~tiv aiKio-p? ovSl parj^avrjpi , OTO) 
7rpor/3ei//€rat tie Zevs yeyoivrjaaL raSe, 2 

1 O holy ./Ether, and swift winged Winds, 
And River-wells, and laughter innumerous 
Of yon sea-waves ! Earth, mother of us all, 
And all-viewing cyclic Sun, I cry on you ! — 
Behold me a god, what I endure from gods ! 

****** 
Woe, woe ! to-day's woe and the coming morrow's, 
I cover with one groan. 

2 No torture from his hand, 
Nor any machination in the world 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 133 

irpXv av xaXacrBrj Secrfxa XvLiavrypta. 

7To6s TOLVTa pL7TT€<T0(D fxlv aWaXoVCTCTa (f>Xb£, 
\eVK07TTepO) $€ VLCpdSi KCLL (3pOVT7]fJLa(Ti 
)(8oVLOlS KVKOLTO) TCaVTa KCLL Tapaa(T€T(l) ' 

yvapaf/a yap ovSlv rwvSe pC cocrre kcil (ppdaat 
7rpos ov xpeoij/ viv iK-ireaetv TvpavvtSos. 

This imprecation finds sublime fulfilment in the great 
closing passage, 1080-1093. 

Ktxi.pvqv epyw kovk ert llvOw 

)(8iov aecrdXevTai ' 

(3pv^ta S' rj)(U) Trapap.VKa.TaL 

fipovTrjs, cAtKes 8' eKXdpurovcri 

<TTf.poTrf)s t,a7rvpoL, 

crrpoLi/3oL Se kovlv tlXtcrcrovcn ' 

(TKipTa 8' dvepLO)v trvtviKara rrdvTiov 

eh dXXrjXa 

crrdcriv dvTLTrvovv a7roSeiKvu/xei/a ' l 

Shall force mine utterance, ere he loose, himself, 
These cankerous fetters from me ! For the rest, 
Let him now hurl his blanching lightnings down, 
And with his white-winged snows, and mutterings deep 
Of subterranean thunders, mix all things, 
Confound them in disorder! None of this 
Shall bend my sturdy will, and make me speak 
The name of his dethroner who shall come. 

1 Ay ! in act, now — in word, now, no more ! 
Earth is rocking in space ! 
And the thunders crash up with a roar upon roar, 
And the eddying lightnings flash fire in my face, 
And the whirlwinds are whirling the dust round and round, 
And the blasts of the winds universal, leap free 
And blow each upbn each, with a passion of sound, 



134 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

^vvTCTapaKTai 8 afflrjp 7tovto). 
roictS' £tt i/xoi parr] Otodev 
Ttv)(ovo-a <po/3ov aTet\€L </>ai/epo)s. 
w pLrjTpos ipLrjs arefias, a> Tr&VTiov 
aldrjp kolvov <£aos eiA.t<rera)v, 
icropas p? ws €k8iko. 7racr^w. 

The " manifest dread," — re^ovcra <p6(3ov, — like the " frenzy- 
ing fear" in Shelley, is a note seldom struck by the brave 
Titan. 

The last stanza of the Curse has a fine parallel in lines 
915-919 of ^Eschylus, describing the Fall of Jupiter. 

Act I., L. 296-301. 

An awful image of calm power, 

Though now thou sittest, let the hour 

Come, when thou must appear to be 

That which thou art, internally, 
And after many a false and fruitless crime, 
Scorn track thy lagging fall thro' boundless space and time. 

L. 915. • • • 7rpos ravra vvv 

Oapadv KaOrjaOu) rot? 7re8a0criois ktu7tois 
7TIO-T09, Ttvacrcruiv X 6 / 30 ™ trvpirvoov fitkos. 1 

And aether goes mingling in storm with the sea ! 
Such a curse on my head, with a manifest dread, 
From the hand of your Zeus has been hurtled along! 
O my mother's fair glory ! O, ^Ether, enringing 
All eyes, with the sweet common light of thy bringing, 

Dost thou see how I suffer this wrong? 

1 Now, therefore, let him sit 
And brave the imminent doom, and fix his faith 
On his supernal noises, hurtling on 
With restless hand, the bolt that breathes out fire. 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 135 

ovSkv yap aurc3 ravr €7rap/<eo-a to pvq ov 
7r£<reiv dri/AO)? 7TTW/u.aT ovk dvacr^era. 

The closest parallelism in situation in the dramas is found 
in the colloquy which each contains between Hermes and 
Prometheus. In each, Hermes is sent from Zeus to extort 
the Secret known to the Titan, or to inflict fresh tortures ; in 
each, he is treated with scorn and his offers ignominiously 
thrown back. The form of this discussion more nearly 
approaches the form of the Greek drama than does anything 
else in Shelley, the two speakers answering each the other 
in brief sententious phrases. This sharp repartee is a 
favorite form in Greek drama : it is quite out of Shelley's 
usual line, yet he here uses it with great force and effect. 
One or two passages in the dialogue are similar rather in 
thought than in form : — 

Act I., L. 429. Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven, 

Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene, 
As light in the sun, throned : . . . 

L. 966. rfjs o~r}s Xarpetas rrjv i/xrjv bvo-irpa^Lav, 
o-acjfroj? k-TTtdraa- , ovk av aWd^atp,* eyco. 
Kpeiacrov yap oi/xou rfjSe Xarpeveiv 7reVpa 
rj iraTpX <j>vvaL Zrjvl iriaTov ayycXov. 

Yet the spirit of the two scenes is on the whole widely 
different. The Mercury of Shelley is well-disposed towards 

For these things shall not help him, none of them, 
Nor hinder his perdition when he falls 
To shame, and lower than patience. 

1 I would not barter — learn thou soothly that ! — 
My suffering for thy service. I maintain 
It is a nobler thing to serve these rocks 
Than live a faithful slave to father Zeus. 



136 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

Prometheus, and regretful and courteous in address ; the 
Hermes of /Eschylus is a flippant and cruel young God. 
The part played by Shelley's Mercury is much more nearly 
approached by Oceanus in the Greek drama who tempts the 
Titan by seeming friendliness, while yet he is too weak cour- 
ageously to take his part. Hephaestus, again, mourns, like 
Mercury, that it falls to his share to inflict suffering on Pro- 
metheus. Compare Shelley, 

Act I., L. 352. . . . Awful Sufferer, 

To thee unwilling, most unwillingly 
I come, by the great Father's will driven down, 
To execute a doom of new revenge. 
Alas ! I pity thee, and hate myself 
That I can do no more, 
with ^Eschylus, 

L. 14. eyco 8' <ztoA./xo? dpu avyyevrj Oebv 

Srjaai j3ui <f)dpayyi Trpos Sva^ei/xepio. 
Travrcos 8' dvay/07 TtuvSe /xol toX/jlolv a^edelv 
e£a>|Oia£eiv yap 7raT/309 Aoyous j3apv. 
tt/s dpOofiovXov ®e/AiSos anrvpJrJTa irai, 
aKOvra <t a.K.mv hvcrXvTOis )(a\K€vp.acn 
7rpoo"7racro-aX€t;o'a) . . . 

and with a later exclamation of Hephaestus as he still hesi- 
tates before his cruel task, 

L. 45. co iroXXa paarjOelaa ^etpcoi/a^ta. 

1 I lack your daring, up this storm-rent chasm 
To fix with violent hands a kindred god, 
Howbeit necessity compels me so 
That I must dare it, — and our Zeus commands 
With a most inevitable word. Ho, thou ! 
High-thoughted son of Themis who is sage, 
Thee loth, I loth must rivet fast in chains. 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 137 

As he completes that task and gazes upon the Sufferer's 
form, Hephaestus cries to Kratos : — * 

L. 69. opas Oeafxa SvaOearov o/x/mcriv. 1 

It is with like horror and pity that Mercury describes his 
haunting memory of that vison. 

L. 357. ... aye from thy sight 

Returning, for a season, Heaven seems Hell, 
So thy worn form pursues me night and day, 
Smiling reproach. 

The stern lines of dialogue (I. 411-416), which declare 
that the "years to come of pain" are limited only by "the 
period of Jove's power," but that this end of tyranny " must 
come," suggest passages of similar form and content in 
^schylus, 755-77°. 5°7-5 2 °- Thus : — 

IIPOMHeETS. 
L. 755* vvv 8' ovSev icrTL rep/jia fxot irpoKU^vov 
Ia6)(0wv, 77-/01 v av Zevs iKTriarf TvpavviSos. 

m. 

rj yap ttot earlv eKTrecreiv apx^ Ata/ 2 

****** 

1 Thou dost behold a spectacle that turns 
The sight o' the eyes to pity. 

2 Prometheus. 
. . . but I before me see 
In all my far prevision, not a bound 
To all I suffer, ere that Zeus shall fall 
From being a king. 

Io. 

And can it ever be 
That Zeus shall fall from empire? 



138 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

nPOMHGETS. 
to? tolvvv ovroiv TtoySe trot /xaOelv Trdpa. 

While already, in solemn words which " half reveal and half 

conceal" the mysterious decree of Fate, Prometheus has 

made known to the Chorus that even Zeus shall bend to 

Necessity. 

XOPOS. 

L. 515. rts ovv avdyKrjs earlv oiaKoar po<pos ; 

nPOMHOETS. 
[xolpai rpc/xopcpoL, pLvrjpLoves r 'Epivues. 

XOPOS. 
TovTiov apa Zeus ecrrtv dcrOevecrrepos. 

nPOMHOETS. 
ovkovv dv €K<j>vyoL ye rrjv 7re7rpa)p,evr)v. 

XOPOS. 
tl yap 7r€7T|oa)Tat Zrjvl, ttXtjv del Kparelv / l 

Prometheus. 
Learn from me, therefore, that the event shall be. 

1 Chorus. 
Who holds the helm of that Necessity? 

Prometheus. 
The threefold Fates, and the unforgetting Furies. 

Chorus. 
Is Zeus less absolute than these are? 

Promb'.theus. 

Yea, 
And therefore cannot fly what is ordained. 

Chorus. 
What is ordained for Zeus, except to be 
A king for ever? 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 139 

nPOMHeETS. 

TOVT OVK <LT (XV 7Tv0otO, fJLTJ&e XlTTapU. 

With the coming of the Furies, we enter another set of 
associations. There is nothing like this in the Prometheus 
Bound : but in two other plays of ^Eschylus — the Choe- 
phorae and the Eumenides — we have a suggestive and hor- 
rible picture of these "hounds of Hell." It is evident that 
Shelley must have been thoroughly familiar with the Greek 
conception of the Erinyes. His Furies, like those of ^Eschy- 
lus, are sable-stoled daughters of Night ; they rise from Hell 
in evil throngs, their locks are snaky, they track their victim 
like hounds, they feel fierce joy in the pursuit. The picture, 
in the Eumenides, of Apollo, young, grave, gracious, sternly 
reproaching the hideous forms and protecting his suppliant 
Orestes, suggests at once Shelley's Mercury, the fair god, as 
he holds back the forms of darkness and forces them to 
crouch in silence at his bidding. The transition from the 
Chorus of Furies to the Chorus of healing spirits, at the end 
of the first act of the Prometheus Unbound, is no more 
marked than the transition in the Eumenides when the 
Furies appear as protecting divinities of Athens, and their 
hymns to Athens and to Freedom relieve the horror of 
the drama. Yet the contrast between the workings of 
the Greek imagination and the English could not be more 
sharply marked than by comparing the Furies of ^Eschylus 
with those of Shelley, — the " troop of hideous women," wing- 
less, gross, physical, who lie in disgusting sleep in the temple 



Prometheus. 

'Tis too early yet 
For thee to learn it : ask no more. 



140 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

of Apollo, with the shadowy forms of spiritual evil, who 
sweep upward from the horizon, 

Blackening the birth of day with countless wings, 
And hollow underneath, like death. 

^Eschylus leaves nothing to the imagination ; Shelley leaves 
all but everything. 

The only other part of the Prometheus Unbound where 
Shelley has obviously and consciously followed ^schylus is 
in the long passage of the second act where Asia describes 
to Demogorgon the service which Prometheus has rendered 
to man. Compare Shelley, II. iv. 32-99, with ^Eschylus, 
196-254, 442-471, 476-506. This enumeration of bene- 
fits bestowed comes more gracefully from the lips of Asia 
than from those of the Titan himself; but Shelley has fol- 
lowed ^Eschylus very closely. Prometheus has given men 
fire, has taught them to build, in yEschylus houses, in 
Shelley cities, to sail the ocean in "winged chariots," and 
to discover the mineral treasures of the earth. He has 
trained them in medicine, in astronomy, in the knowledge 
of science, letters, and art, though by T^Eschylus the last 
gift is only hinted in the gift of Memory, the " sweet 
Muse-mother." Shelley omits the ^Eschylean passage con- 
cerning the reading of omens. The modern and ancient 
poets unite in assigning to Prometheus the glory of awaken- 
ing Hopes within the human breast ; but in ^schylus the 
Hopes are blind, while in Shelley they 

hide with thin and rainbow wings 
The Shape of Death. 

Finally, Shelley adds to hope, Love — a gift unmentioned 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 141 

by the Greek. The two passages should be carefully com- 
pared. 

These are perhaps all the points worth mentioning in 
which Shelley shows direct and conscious recollection of the 
Prometheus Bound. But this enumeration by no means 
exhausts the influence of the Greek drama upon the English. 
For when one mighty imagination comes within the sphere of 
another, countless unconscious influences pass from spirit to 
spirit. The temper and style of the Prometheus Unbound are 
yEschylean. We realize at once how completely the genius 
of y^schylus had dominated Shelley, if we compare the ex- 
alted and severe grandeur of many parts of the drama with 
the tremulous and sensitive style, most native to Shelley's 
genius, found in such poems as the Lines in the Euganean 
Hills. The Greek drama also affects the English in an 
exquisite way, through what we may call pictorial suggestion. 
A poet's imagination deals primarily, not with intellectual 
abstractions, but with pictures, and it is evident that Shelley's 
mind was filled and possessed by the mere images of Pro- 
metheus Bound. There is no likeness in the place held by 
Io and by Asia : yet surely the picture-elements in Io's story 
helped to create the story of Asia. The vision of a Wander- 
ing was in Shelley's mind, — of a woman, questioning a silent 
figure, wise with foreknowledge of fate, then passing onward 
on her way. Io, like Asia, is stirred and troubled. Aroused 
by visions of the night, she fares forth on a wide journey. 
As Io questions Prometheus, Asia questions Demogorgon. 
In many other ways we seem to trace this same force of 
suggestion at work, though we may not penetrate with too 
assured a step the secret workings of the poet's imagination. 
Shelley had seen, through the eyes of ^Eschylus, a troop of 



142 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

Sea-nymphs, winging their way upward from the void, and 
dropping on the cliff beside the Titan (yEschylus, 1 15-135). 
He gives us a Vision of Furies, winged shadows, sweeping 
from the horizon toward the Titan's rock : and again, as 
the storm disperses, he sees a fairer band. Delicate- 
winged, 

A troop of spirits gather 
Like flocks of clouds in Spring's delightful weather. 

Many minor suggestions are to be found — some of pictures, 
some of thoughts, some of mere form and sound of words. 
By the English refrain of sorrow, we may set a Greek 
line : — 

S., I. L. 23. Ah me ! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever ! 

A., L. 98, 99. cfiev 4>tv, to irapov to t e-rrep^ofxevov 
7rrjjxa o-Tevd)(a). 

And the Greek might be called a paraphrase of the articu- 
lated groan of the English. There is a chorus in ^Eschylus 
(396-435) which wails with reiterated moaning, sounding 
the changes in every possible way on the word o-revo) ; and 
something of the same echoing sorrow is heard through two 
snatches of earth-chorus in Shelley, I. 107-111, 306-311, 
where the word " misery," repeated over and over, gives 
a like effect of lamentation. 

" Peace is in the grave," cries Prometheus, when the Furies 
have released him : — 

I am a God, and cannot find it there. 

Io passionately calls on Death ; and Prometheus with 
calm majesty replies : — 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 143 

L. 752. rj SiKr7reTW? av roil? ipovs a6\ovs <f>epoi<s, 
6Va> Oavecv piv ecrriv ol izi.irpuip.kvov. 
avrrj yap yv av ir-qpaTOiv airaXXayq} 

Compare also, in ^Eschylus, lines 933, 1053. The thought 
of the "nature and self-inflicted suffering of the tyrant is the 
same. 

To know nor love, nor friend, nor law, to be 

Omnipotent but friendless, is to reign, 

cries Asia : and Prometheus says of the Zeus of ^Eschylus : — 

L. 224. tvccTTL yap 7rw? tovto rfj TvpavvtSt 

vocrr)p:a, tois cpt.\oicrL p.rj TrcTzoiOivair 

When Shelley tells us the Spirits of the Mind « 

Inhabit, as birds wing the wind, 
Its world-surrounding tether, 

we remember the musical phrase of zEschylus (281), aWepa 
ayvbv iropov oiwviov, " holy aether, path of birds." 
Compare also the following passages : — 



Shelley, I. 140-143, with ^schylus, 311-314 

r 315.316 

375-379. " " j 377, 37§ 

v I 002-I 006 

" 114-119, " " 228-238 

1 Verily, 
It would be hard for thee to hear my woe, 
For whom it is appointed not to die. 
Death frees from woe. 

2 For kingship wears a cancer at the heart, — 
Distrust in friendship. 



144 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

Shelley, I. 



II. 



III. 



IV. 



582,5831 
591-593/ 


vith 


^-Eschylus, 


687-695 


617, 618 

29, 30 

15,16 

42, 49 ^ 
21, 22 j 


« 
« 


<< 


740-746 
144, 145 
397-401 

138-140 


141 


(( 


it 


f 671,672 
I682 


93-95 


" 


« 


f 442-450 
I 546-550 



NOTES. 



SHELLEY'S PREFACE. 

See Mrs. Shelley's Note on the drama for an enlargement of the 
statements concerning Shelley's aim and conception contained in the 
Preface; and see a letter written by the poet to his friend Peacock, 
March 23, 1 819, for a wonderful description of the Baths of Caracalla, 
mentioned in the text, where the drama was composed. Many of the 
letters written to Peacock from Italy have touches of description clearly 
showing whence the inspiration of the Prometheus Unbound was 
derived. 



ACT I. 

11. 1-73. This first great soliloquy of Prometheus is full of Miltonic 
echoes. In the union of austere and elevated simplicity with a certain 
splendor of effect, the blank verse is singularly like that of Paradise 
Lost. 

1. 9. Eyeless in hate. The clause modifies " thou " in the next line. 

1. 30. Ah me ! ala;, etc. The first notable example of an irregular 
line, though other minor instances have already occurred. The stu- 
dent should carefully trace all metrical irregularities, great and small, 
in the poem, and should consider their artistic effect. Shelley's varia- 
tions on the schematic line are one of the chief sources of his musical 
power. 

1. 31. The crawling glaciers. The detail of these lines strikingly 
enhances the horror of the opening picture. The glaciers, catching 
reflections of the moon in their icy points, are the chains which bind the 
vast form of the Titan to the rock. A stupendous image is thus sug- 

145 



146 . PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act I. 

gested of the scale of the picture, and the duration of Prometheus' 
torture. 

1. 34. Heaven's winged hound. The only reference in the drama 
to the vulture of the ancient myth. Shelley discards much of the old 
machinery of torture. He begins, it is true, with the material sublime 
and the suggestion of physical agony; almost at once, however, he 
passes to the more subtle torture of the spirit. See Lanier, Develop- 
ment of the Novel, Chapter V, for an unsympathetic attack on the set- 
ting of the drama. 

1. 48. The wingless, crawling hours. Cf. II. i. 16. 

1. 54. Thro" 1 the wide Heaven. Forman thinks, though with no au- 
thority, that " the " should be omitted. 

1. 74. Thrice three hundred. The controlled sadness of the solilo- 
quy of Prometheus is relieved by the more impassioned horror of these 
Voices of Nature, just as the even movement of the blank verse is 
relieved by the swift, free movement of the lyrics. 

1. 108. Cried l Mise?y ! ' then. " The convulsion of terror is obviously 
natural; but wherefore the cry of 'Misery' when the curse smote the 
fell tyrant of Earth and Heaven, and predicted his fall?" — James 
Thomson. 

1. 124. Why scorns the spirit. There is alienation between the Earth 
and Prometheus. The old earth-mother speaks to him with an " in- 
organic voice," which can but convey dim suggestions of a shrouded 
meaning. Once, blessed with the fellowship of Asia, the Anima Mundi, 
the communion between man and nature has been complete : it is so 
no longer. Man, tortured and unredeemed, seeks in vain to understand 
the language of nature. Cf. a like alienation beautifully rendered in 
Mrs. Browning's Drama of Exile, where the Earth-Spirits reproach 
Adam and Eve that their sin has separated nature from man. 

1. 137. And love. Hozv cursed I him ? The subject of "love " is of 
course " I " (1. 136) ; but the statement seems a little vague and weak. 
Rossetti proposes an ingenious emendation : " And Jove — how cursed 
I him?" Forman speaks of the "stagey abruptness" of this reading; 
Mr. Swinburne also rejects it, but says that it gives us "a reasonable 
reading in place of one barely explicable." 

1. 195. For know, there are two worlds. An obscure passage. Per- 
haps it is foolish to seek for an adequate explanation of this strange 



act I.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 147 

underworld, and we may best ascribe the fancy to the lingering love of 
magic which so bewitched Shelley's boyhood. The sphere of Memory, 
of the Imagination, of Platonic archetypes, is vaguely suggested. 

1. 222. . My wings are folded. In these exquisite lyrics, the first 
poetry of pure beauty in the drama, we meet for the first time the 
sister-spirits, lone and Panthea, whose presence soothes the austere 
agony of the Titan. lone is the forward-looking spirit of Hope; 
Panthea is the spirit of insight into the universal divine, which, how- 
ever Shelley would have shrunk from the word, we may best describe 
as Faith. 

1. 240. Why have the secret powers. There is a fine nemesis in thus 
causing the Phantasm of Jupiter to repeat the curse. Evil is self- 
condemned; it pronounces its own doom. 

1. 2g2. Heap on thy soul. Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, I. 211 : — 

" The will 
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven 
Left him at large to his own dark designs, 
That with reiterated crimes, he might 
Heap on himself damnation." 

This Curse is simply the statement of the inexorable law by which 
cause works out to effect. 

1. 303. It doth repent me. In "the superiority of the mind over its 
own darker passions " implied in Prometheus' recantation of the Curse, 
Mr. Rossetti sees " the beginning of the fall of Jupiter and the unbind- 
ing of Prometheus." " Prometheus can expel from the very essence 
of his being the passions of hatred and revenge ... he can discover 
Jupiter to be an imposture, and can pity instead of hating him; and 
then Jupiter will sink, an impotent and innocuous bubble, upon the 
tide of eternity. Shelley exhibits to us the human mind at this stage." 
We must remember that Jupiter derives all his power from Prometheus. 
Rossetti regards him as the anthropomorphic God, created by the 
mind of man, and tyrannizing over its creator; but surely the myth is 
quite as much political as theological. See Introduction. 

1. 306. Misery, Oh misery. From the order of natural law, with its 
unfailing nemesis, Prometheus has escaped into the higher order of 
forgiveness. The Earth, with merely natural understanding, feels that 
he who forgives is vanquished. 



148 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act I. 

1. 313. Fallen and vanquished. We have here the first instance 
of the ethereal chorus-voices which sound through the poem and 
enhance the vastness of the action by suggesting the mysterious sym- 
pathy of all creation. " The world in which the action is supposed to 
move rings with spirit-voices; and what these spirits sing is melody 
more purged of mortal dross than any other poet's ear has caught, 
while listening to his own heart's song, or to the rhythms of the 
world." — SYMONDS. 

1. 314. Fear not. Notice throughout the different functions of the 
two attendant spirits. lone, the embodiment of Hope, is first to see. 
She beholds, describes, and questions. Panthea, the brooding spirit of 
Faith, interprets. Cf. I. 579-590; II. iv. 404-410; IV. 30-40, 185-190. 

1. 340. The hope of torturing him. Note the horrible dramatic 
appropriateness of the simile, on the lips of Fury. All the figures used 
in connection with the Furies should be noted. 

1. 382. I gave all He has. " This Jupiter, the ' Prince of this world,' 
the embodiment of tyranny, false religion, evil custom, is, in his most 
familiar form, ' the letter that killeth ' — authority, orthodoxy, the 
petrified dogma, which hinders the play of free thought ... as Prome- 
theus is ' the spirit that giveth life.' " — Todhunter. 

1. 431. A r ot me, within whose mind sits peace serene. Cf. Comus, 

372,373: — 

" Virtue could see to do what virtue would 
By her own radiant light, though sun and moon 
Were in the flat sea sunk." 

Also the Faerie Queene, I. ii. 12 : — 

" Virtue gives herself light, through darkness for to wade." 

1. 442. Blackening the birth of day. The horrible formlessness of the 
Furies has both an aesthetic and a symbolic value. Cf. lines 465-470. 

1. 484. Thou think'' st we will live thro'' thee. This passage sug- 
gests the nearest approach to the consciousness of Sin to be found in 
the drama. 

1. 540. The pale stars of the morn. Here begins the central Agony 
of Prometheus. The Furies tear asunder the veil that separates present 
from future, and reveal to the Titan, hanging upon his cliff, visions of 



act i.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 149 

the two central tragedies (as conceived by Shelley) of the world's his- 
tory. The first Vision is of the Crucifixion of Christ; the second, of 
the French Revolution. The sting of the torture is found in the sug- 
gestion that these great events, however much of heroism and self- 
sacrifice they imply, resulted in injury rather than benefit to humanity. 
The Furies, spirits of negation, instead of seeing a soul of goodness in 
things evil, see a soul of evil in all things good. 

1. 542. Dost thou faint, mighty Titan? The Furies tempt Pro- 
metheus to despair by suggesting that the aspiration he has awakened 
in man is a curse rather than a blessing because destined to remain 
forever unfulfilled. This attitude towards aspiration is that of the 
pessimist. It marks much of our modern poetry, from Arnold to 
Swinburne, but finds a noble converse in the message of Browning. 
Cf. with these lines Swinburne, in the Atalanta in Calydon : — 

" Thou hast given man sleep, but smitten sleep with dreams, 
Saying 'joy is not, but love of joy shall be.' 
Thou hast made sweet springs to all our pleasant streams, 
In the end thou hast made them bitter with the sea." 

See also William Blake's Human Abstract. 

1. 584. Alas ! I looked forth twice. Faith and Hope veil their faces, 
and Prometheus endures unaided. 

1. 619. In each human heart. It is notable that this climax of the 
torture is expressed in dull blank verse, and consists in a simple state- 
ment of commonplace fact. Is there an artistic error here? 

1. 673. From unreme?nbered ages. As the Furies turn all good into 
evil, so these gentle Spirits of the Human Mind bring consolation by 
singing that all evil is the occasion for higher good. The first sings of 
Courage even in defeat; the second of Self-sacrifice, impossible if 
suffering were not. The third and fourth chant of Wisdom and Imagi- 
nation, the two powers of hope. 

1. 708. Which begins and ends in thee. E.g. " in the powers and 
constitution of the human mind." — Rossetti. 

1. 738. On a poet's lips I slept. This exquisite little lyric has been 
called the fullest expression of poetic idealism. It calls to mind at 
once many passages from the poems of Emerson. 

1. 753. Behold' 'si thou not two shapes. The lyrics which follow 



150 PR OME THE US UNB O UND. [ act 11. 

are " dainty but obscure." It is clear at least, however, that these two. 
spirits bring the healing power of Sympathy. Like the Furies, they 
fully recognize the evil in the world ; unlike the Furies, they do not 
gloat over it, but lament it. The consolation offered Prometheus has 
no unreal element; it never transcends the limits of truth. 

1. 805. The responses. Always so accented by Shelley. Cf. II. i. 
171. 



ACT II. Scene I. 

1. 35. Pardon, great Sister ! " Panthea is the perpetual messenger 
of love between Prometheus and his divine consort, as Faith is between 
the genius of man and its ideal. . . . Shelley has here made English 
blank verse the native language of elemental genii." — Todhunter. 

I.43. Erezvhile I slept. An attempt to discover literal consistency 
in the chronology of the drama is puzzled here. Panthea leaves Pro- 
metheus at the close of the last act, and speeds to Asia. She arrives at 
this point. When has she had a chance to sleep and dream under the 
ocean? The answer must be that the drama takes place in that spirit- 
ual region which has nothing to do with time, where ideas of succes- 
sion cannot enter : " Its date is of course in an ideal seon, beyond the 
range of chronology, unimpeached by anachronism, so that, notwith- 
standing the antiquity of the dramatis persona and fable, the catas- 
trophe points to a far apocalyptic future, and the allusions to the most 
recent discoveries of science are just as much in place as those to pre- 
historic traditions." — James Thomson. 

1. 62. But in the other. This is the Dream of Fulfilment. The mys- 
tical poetry suggests the time when Faith shall be lost in sight, as Pan- 
thea feels her being absorbed in the life of Prometheus. 

1. 83. And like the vapours. The similes drawn from Nature through- 
out this wonderful scene should be collected and carefully studied. 
The close and minute accuracy of Shelley's observation will become no 
less apparent than his sensitiveness to the poetry of nature. 

1. 119. There is a change. Only in the eyes of Faith, can Love be- 
hold the vision of Humanity triumphant. 

1. 131. Follow ! follow ! From the point of the appearance of the 



scenes I., ii., in.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 151 

Dream of Progress to the end of the scene Nature becomes, as it were, 
progressively spiritualized. In the first soliloquy of Asia, its marvellous 
loveliness is still external if not sensuous; but in the latter part of the 
scene, Shelley's Hegelian conception of the gradual evolution of 
spiritual consciousness in the natural world finds free symbolic expres- 
sion. 

1. 141. As you speak. First nature, then faith, voice the same sum- 
mons. 

1. 166. Echoes we: listen! These Echoes are of course spiritual 
nature-voices, undefined : not, as Todhunter strangely conjectures, the 
voice of primeval Hope, or lone, lingering in the craggy caverns of 
the world. 

Scene II. 

These lyrics can be compared to nothing in the range of English 
poetry except Keats's Ode to a Nightingale. They are not only, how- 
ever, nature-poems : they have a symbolic meaning which can be 
neglected when they are enjoyed away from their connection, but 
which adds to their interest when the drama is taken as a whole. Love 
and Faith are pursuing their journey through all human experience : 
and first they pass through the sphere of the Senses, or external life 
(Semichorus I.) ; then through that of the Emotions (Semichorus II.) ; 
finally, through that of the Reason and the Will (Semichorus III.). 

1. 209. The path thro 1 which. The interwoven rhyme-scheme should 
be traced by the student, that one source of the linked sweetness of the 
lyric may be understood. 

1. 258. And wakes the destined. Shelley's fatalism, the doctrine under- 
lying this lyric, rather injures the poetry, rendering it obscure and 
abstruse. The " fatal mountain " is probably that to which Panthea 
and Asia are advancing, and where we find them at the beginning of 
the next scene. 

1. 278. I have heard those. This passage is a perfect little fairy-tale 
in itself. Indeed, the whole dialogue of the Fauns is like a pastoral 
interlude. 

Scene III. 

Is the dawn in which we here find ourselves that of the first or the 
second day? According to Thomson, it is impossible to ascertain. 



152 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act n. 

Perhaps the journey of Asia and Panthea has lasted through twenty- 
four (dramatic) hours; perhaps it has taken place in a moment of 
time. Thomson thinks that the scene in the Cave of Demogorgon, the 
overthrow of Jupiter and the transfiguration of Asia, all occur in 
the darkest hour of the night, just before the dawn. There are some 
expressions which seem to bear out this theory; yet it is hard to think 
of the descent into Demogorgon's Cave, and the colloquy between him 
and Asia as occupying all day and the greater part of the night. See 
note, II. iv. 557. The position taken by the present writer is that, 
whatever obscure time-intimations may be found, Shelley's intention 
was to fix the mind on central points in the sequence of the one great 
cosmic day. See Introduction. Is it possible that later commentators 
will find here a phenomenon like that of the alleged double time in 
Othello? 

1. 316. Fit throne for such a Potver ! " Here Asia speaks rather as a 
mortal maiden might than in her own character." — Todhunter. 

1. 341. Hark ! the rushing snow ! With this superb avalanche, com- 
pare another, equally fine, in Browning's Saul : — 

" Have ye seen when Spring's arrowy summons goes straight to the aim, 
And some mountain, the last to withstand her, that held (he alone, 
While the vale laughed in freedom and flowers) on a broad bust of stone 
A year's snow bound about for a breastplate, — leaves grasp of the sheet? 
Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously down to his feet, 
And there fronts you, stark, black, but alive yet, your mountain of old, 
With his rents, the successive bequeathings of ages untold." 

1. 348. Look hozv the gusty sea. Suspense and gradual suggestion are 
admirably used in this passage to prepare us for a great event. 

1- 359- To the deep, to the deep. We have left the phenomenal 
world behind us, and are on the heights of pure mysticism, whence we 
are to be carried downward to the abysses of absolute being " where 
there is one pervading, one alone." This descent of Asia recalls Faust's 
descent to the Mothers, in the second part of Faust. 

1. 399. Such strength is in meekness. These lines make it clear that 
Asia is not only a spectator, but an agent in the redemption of human- 
ity. The power of Demogorgon can be set free only when Love has 
attained to utter self-abnegation. 



scene iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 153 



Scene IV. 

1. 405. I see a mighty darkness. The treatment of Demogorgon can- 
not be called a great nor a consistent success; yet it is by a fine tour 
de force that Shelley makes us feel, even as clearly as he does, the 
presence of a spirit which is described entirely by negations. 

I.415. Who made that sense. These exquisite lines are deficient in 
grammatical construction. Rossetti changes " when " to "at." Forman 
suggests " hear " for " or." 

1. 431. He reigns. The slight variations in Demogorgon's answers 
to these questions should be carefully noted. 

1. 435. There was the Heaven. This long passage, with its reminis- 
cences of the traditional Golden Age, and its picture of a highly 
elaborate civilization, seems somewhat inconsistent with the general 
tenor of the myth; yet it corresponds to Shelley's idea of Jupiter, as 
the petrifaction of the earlier customs and faith of primitive humanity 
into rigid and tyrannous law. 

1- 5°3- Who rains down. It is doubtful whether this word should 
be " reigns " or " rains " : the two readings give very different sense. 
The reading here adopted is that of Mrs. Shelley and of Rossetti. 
Does Asia ask the origin of Evil or the ultimate Power of the universe? 

1- 5*7- If the abysm. The punctuation here given is that of Ros- 
setti's edition. 

1. 523. But eternal Love. This line and a half is the quiet state- 
ment in abstract terms of the central theme elsewhere expressed 
through glowing symbol. The message is the same as that of Tenny- 
son, who begins his In Memoriam with the invocation, — 

" Strong Son of God, Immortal Love." 

It is the same as that of Browning, who exclaims : — 

" Love, which on earth, amid all the shows of it 
Has ever been known the sole good of life in it, 
That love, ever growing here, spite of the strife in it 
Shall arise, made perfect, from Death's repose of it." 

Yet the thought of Shelley stops short of the thought of the Victorian 
poets, in that to him Love remains simply a universally diffused and 
abstract emotion, while to them it is embodied in a Personality. 



154 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act ii. 

1. 532. The rocks are cloven. This marvellous picture of color and 
light in motion could, as all critics agree, have been adequately ren- 
dered only by the pencil of William Blake. Mr. Walter Crane has an 
interesting attempt to render the scene. He gives the impression of 
speed and of forms born of the viewless wind, but misses the impres- 
sion of beauty. 

1. 557. Watch its path among the stars. These lines, and the pre- 
ceding 1. 537, lend plausibility to the theory that we are in the depth of 
night, and that many hours have elapsed since Asia and Panthea were 
swept downward to the abode of Demogorgon. On the other hand, 
Shelley seems, as pointed out in the Introduction, to conceive the 
progress of the drama as coincident with the progress of the mystic cos- 
mical day, from midnight to high noon. The student should consider 
the problem in the light of passages like II. v. 587; III. ii. 85, etc. The 
passages in the present scene may be easily understood and the imagi- 
native power of the scene heightened, if we conceive Asia and Panthea 
gazing upward to the sky through darkness so profound that the stars 
are revealed even in the morning light. This phenomenon is frequently 
seen in mines. 

Scene V. 

1. 578. On the brink. A sense of breathless speed is imparted by 
the break in this lyric and the swift change of scene, as well as by 
the abrupt omission of the last line in the concluding stanza. 

1. 587. The sun will rise not. A bit of Shelleyan mysticism, incon- 
sistent with the general progress of the cosmic day (cf. II. i.), but 
suggestive of the suspension of mere physical light in the presence of 
the Light of Love. 

1. 589. As the aerial hue. The figure recalls one curiously similar in 
I. 465 ; yet as in that the beauty enhanced horror by contrast, so here it 
enhances beauty by likeness — thus illustrating two great principles of 
aesthetics. 

1. 597. The Nereids tell. See various versions of the Birth of Aph- 
rodite : in particular Tennyson's Princess, and Swinburne's Hymn to 

Proserpine : — 

..." lovelier in her mood 
Than in her mould that other, when she came 
From barren deeps to conquer all with love; 



scene v.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 155 

And down the streaming crystal dropt ; and she 
Far-fleeted by the purple island-sides, 
Naked, a double light in air and wave, 
To meet her Graces, where they decked her out 
For worship without end." 

" Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of flowering seas — 
Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment, and fair as the foam, 
And fleeter than kindled fire, and a Goddess, and mother of Rome — 
For thine came pale, and a maiden, and sister to sorrow; but ours 
Her deep hair heavily laden with odour and colour of flowers, 
White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendour, a flame, 
Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew sweet with her name. 
For thine came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected; but she 
Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on the sea, 
And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and the viewless ways, 
And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays." 

1. 62g. In those looks. " What Shelley meant by the mazes of looks, 
Mr. Garnett explains by reference to II. i. 114-117. A still better illus- 
tration is to be found in Shelley's letter of April 6, 1819, to Peacock, 
where he says of the Roman beauties, ' The only inferior part are the 
eyes, which though good and gentle, want the mazy depth of colour 
behind colour with which the intellectual women of England and Ger- 
many entangle the heart in soul-inspiring labyrinths.' " — FORMAN. 

1. 631. Thy lips are burning. The reading of Shelley's edition. 
Mrs. Shelley, followed by Mr. Forman, substitutes " limbs." See a sug- 
gestive comment on this passage in Ruskin's Modern Painters, II. ii. 3, 
" Of Imagination Penetrative." 

1. 632. Thrtf the vest which. A reading which has no authority, but 

which commends itself to the musical ear, makes the line run as 

follows : — 

" Thro' the veil that seems to hide them." 

With this great lyric should be carefully compared Shelley's Hymn to 
Intellectual Beauty. And again a poet utterly remote from Shelley in 
form — Emerson — is in closest sympathy with his mystic idealism. 

1. 649,. My soul is an enchanted boat. A fragment of 181 7 is a study 
for the first lines of this lyric. The lyric is hard to understand. " It 
has been read by many of us scores of times with scarcely a wish per- 
haps to trace out its intricate meaning, but with a keen delight in its 
ideal charm, its supersensuous meander." "The soul, transported into 



156 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act hi. 

idealism by melody, muses upon the indefinable possibilities of existence 
pnenatal and prseterlethal — the world of spirit before birth and after 
death." — Rossetti. The poem suggests the passage of the weary 
nature back through age, maturity, youth, and childhood, till it enters 
the eternal sphere. 

This scene of the Apotheosis of Asia recalls to us the Marriage Feast 
in the first book of the Faerie Queene, where Una, having laid aside 
her mourning, comes forth in silver-white, and dazzles all men by 

" The blazing brightness of her beauties' beame, 
And glorious light of her sunshyny face." 

— F. Q., I. xii. 23. 

It recalls also that far greater scene — greater than anything in Spenser 
or Shelley — where Dante beholds for the last time his Lady Beatrice. 
She is far above him, in the Rose of the Blessed : — 

" Now were my eyes fixed again upon the countenance of my Lady, 
and my mind with them, and from every other interest it was with- 
drawn; and she was not smiling, but, ' If I should smile,' she began to 
me, ' thou wouldest become such as Semele was when she became 
ashes; for my beauty, which along the stairs of the eternal palace is 
kindled the more, as thou hast seen the higher it ascends, is so 
resplendent that, if it were not tempered, at its effulgence thy mortal 
power would be as a bough shattered by thunder.' " — Paradiso, XXI. 



ACT III. Scene I. 

1. 36. Thetis, bright image. "Thetis, like Asia a child of Ocean, is 
her false counterpart. . . . She is a type of the false ideal, the sham 
love and reverence which tyrants exact from their slaves. . . . She is 
glory — the tinsel happiness of the vain and selfish, which the vulgar 
envy." — TODHUNTER. 

1. 40. The Nutnidian seps. The seps is a species of serpent whose 
bite entails swift mortification. The allusion is to the soldier Sabellus, 
who, as is told in Lucan's Pharsalia, IX., died in horrible torment 
from the effect of the bite. 



scenes i., ii.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 157 

1.6l. Detested prodigy ! "It is in that sudden reversion of feeling, 
that suppression of any middle term between the height of power and 
the abyss of destitution, that the author's dramatic sense appears to me 
to proclaim itself. . . . The final speech of Jupiter, in the reach of its 
passion and the awful reserve of its transition, appears to me one of the 
greatest things written by Shelley — one of the great things of all 
time." — Rossetti. 

1. 65. That thou zvouldst make mine enemy my judge. The same 
dramatic effect is produced by Browning, in The Ring and the Book, 
Under utterly different dramatic conditions, when the villanous Guido, 
who has murdered his young wife Pompilia, cries out, as the execu- 
tioners come to lead him to justice : — 

"Abate! Cardinal! Christ! Maria! God! 
Pompilia — will you let them murder me? " 

1. 72. Even as a vulture. Shelley is very fond of.this image. Com- 
pare Laon and Cythna, Canto I. Stanzas VI.-XIV. It is noteworthy 
that the snake is to him always the symbol of the good power. Com- 
pare with this picture of the Fall of Jupiter Mrs. Browning's picture of 
the Fall of Lucifer in the Drama of Exile. 

Scene II. 

The effect of this scene, as of II. ii. is that of an idyllic interlude. 
Its calm beauty serves as relief after the grandiose horrors of Scene I. 
Apollo and Ocean are the traditional classical figures, and have no rela- 
tion with Shelley's peculiar and individual myth. 

1. 87. The terrors of his eye. With this sunset-simile, compare a 
passage in Browning's Saul, where a like illustration is used, with an 
effect gentle instead of terrible. David speaks of the gloomy Saul, 
whom his music is restoring to tenderness : — 

" I looked up, and dared gaze at those eyes, nor was hurt any more 
Than by slow pallid sunsets in Autumn, ye watch from the shore 
At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean." 

1. 94. An eagle so. With this noble description of an eagle caught 
in the whirlwind, compare Landor's equally noble picture of the eagle, 
serene image of a grand and solitary soul : — 



158 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act in. 

" Wakeful he sits, and lonely, and unmoved, 
Beyond the arrows, views, or shouts of men; 
As oftentimes an eagle, ere the sun 
Throws o'er the varying earth his early ray, 
Stands solitary, stands immovable 
Upon some highest cliff, and rolls his eye, 
Clear, constant, unobservant, unabashed, 
In the cold light above the dews of morn." 

— Count Julian, V. ii. 

1. 109. Cf. Shelley, Lines on the Euganean Hills, 320-326. 



Scene III. 

1. 134. Most glorious. Hercules — imported from the old myth — has 
the slightest possible share in the action. Shelley always recognized 
reluctantly the part which brute force plays in human life. 

1. 139. Asia, thoti light of life. "She is the Idea of Beauty Incar- 
nate, the shadow of the Light of Life which sustains the world and 
enkindles it with love, the reality of Alastor's vision, the breathing 
image of the ' awful loveliness ' apostrophied in the Hymn to Intel- 
lectual Beauty, the reflex of the splendour of which Adonais was a 
part. . . . The essential thought of Shelley's creed was that the uni- 
verse is penetrated, vitalized, made real by a spirit, which he sometimes 
called the spirit of Nature, but which is always conceived as more than 
Life, as that which gives its actuality to Life, and therefore as Love 
and Beauty. To adore this spirit, to clasp it with affection and to blend 
with it, is, he thought, the true object of man. Therefore, the final 
union of Prometheus with Asia is the consummation of human des- 
tinies." — SYMONDS. 

1. 143. There is a cave, etc. In this long description, as was pointed 
out in the Introduction, Shelley descends to a merely pastoral pretti- 
ness and betrays something of the luscious sentimentality which charac- 
terized his first boyish work. It is almost comprehensible that the 
Shelley who wrote this passage could have written those nightmare- 
compounds of melodrama and sentiment, Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne. 

1. 157. Ourselves unchanged. No Victorian poet, writing when 
science had revealed the secret of development, could have written 
this line with complacency. 



scene in.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 159 

1. 173. And hither come. Lines as melodious as the famous ones in 
Tennyson's Princess : — 

" The moan of doves in immemorial elms, 
And murmuring of innumerable bees." 

Himera and Enna are towns in Sicily; near the latter is the flowery 
vale whence Persephone was carried off by Dis to the under world. 

1. 184. Whence the forms. Literal interpretation of this passage is 
difficult, but it evidently implies Shelley's Platonic idealism. In his phi- 
losophy, the only reality is in the mind, and thence proceed, not only 
all the forms of art, but the whole external world. We remember, in 
reading the passage, how profoundly he was impressed by the ancient 
statues at Rome. 

1. 195. Veil by veil. Man being entirely passive during the process. 

1. 203. This is the mystic shell. " Sir Guyon de Shelley," says Hogg, 
" one of the most famous of the Paladins, carried about with him three 
conches. . . . When he made the third conch, the golden one, vocal, 
the law of God was immediately exalted, and the law of the devil 
annulled and abrogated wherever the potent sound reached. Was 
Shelley thinking of this golden conch when he described, in his great 
poem, that mystic shell from which is sounded the trumpet-blast of 
universal freedom?" — H. S. Salt. Most interpretations of this shell 
are painfully arbitrary; and perhaps we may as well enjoy the beauty of 
the poetry, for once, without worrying out a meaning. 

1. 218. Thy lips are on me. A few lines here show a fine exercise of 
the mythic power. If Mother Earth could speak, such language would 
she use. 

1. 246. Death is the veil. Here is the limit at which Shelley gives 
up the attempt to solve the final enigmas. He is very fond of this 
expression. It occurs again in one of his few sonnets; and on one 
occasion, when he was nearly drowned, these words were the first he 
uttered on regaining consciousness. 

1. 257. There is a cavern. Is this the Cave Prometheus has just 
spoken of ? And is the Temple beside it identical with the one men- 
tioned in 1. 294? Seemingly not; but the confusion is hopeless. Yet 
" the unessential self-contradictions and inadvertencies are not only 
pardonable as instances of the brave neglect which Pope here and there 



160 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act hi. 

discovered in Homer, but have a certain wild charm of their own, as 
characteristics proving that in Shelley the poet and the man were one. 
We all know how conspicuous in his life was a sort of quasi-freedom 
from the limitations of time and space." — THOMSON. 

1. 292. Crystalline pool. Always so accented by Shelley. Cf. Ode 
to the West Wind : — 

" Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams." 

Scene IV. 

1. 314. // is the delicate spirit. This spirit has been likened to 
Goethe's Euphorion, in the second part of Faust, although of course it 
has a wider meaning than the poet-child of Faust and Helena. The old, 
half inorganic Gaia, the crude material earth, is replaced, now that the 
harmony of man and nature has been restored, by this dainty and more 
rational spirit, who, childish at first, grows into swift maturity of intelli- 
gence and love by the end of Act IV. 

1. 327. As one bit by a dipsas. A kind of serpent whose bite involved 
a deadly thirst. 

I.363. Amid the moonlight. Seemingly another anachronism. The 
Spirit of the Earth wanders through night and dawn, and returns before 
the Spirit of the Hour, who yet was to " outspeed the sun." 

1. 418. Pasturing flowers. This very poor line would read more 
intelligently were we authorized to insert "on" after "pasturing." 

1. 427. Amphisbenic snake. A snake with a head at each end, or 
capable of moving either way. 

1. 433. It was, as it is still. This most characteristic line, startling 
one with sudden brightness in the midst of a dull passage, seems to 
express the very secret of Shelley's nature. 

1. 472. Thrones, altars, etc. This passage, to line 487, has been 
endlessly discussed. It is doubtless very obscure. It is probably best 
to take the word " imaged " in 1. 481 as a past tense, with Rossetti and 
Forman, instead of a participle, with Swinburne. The general sense is 
clear : that the monuments of our present civilization, secular and 
sacred, will be to a regenerate humanity mere memorials of an outworn 
past, as the monuments of ancient civilization are to us to-day. 

1. 506. Passionless ; no. The punctuation here adopted is that of 
Rossetti. 



act iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 161 

ACT IV. 

The Fourth Act was an afterthought, composed at Florence a few 
months after the rest of the drama. The action proper was of course 
concluded with the end of the Third Act : yet we have had a conscious- 
ness throughout that not only the immediate personages but the entire 
universe of living forces were involved in the issue; and the union of 
Prometheus and Asia, as well as the general statements of the Third 
Act, leave us unsatisfied. We demand some expression of rapture from 
those chorus-voices which have lent so much charm to each stage of 
the poem. The Fourth Act, that great symphony of rejoicing, where 
all voices of nature and of the mind sing their triumph, is thus no 
arbitrary addition, but an essential fulfilment of the artistic and spiritual 
unity of the drama. 

" It is difficult to speak highly enough of the fourth act so far as 
lyrical fervor and lambent play of imagination are concerned, both of 
them springing from ethical enthusiasm. It is the combination of these 
which makes this act the most surprising structure of lyrical faculty, 
sustained at an almost uniform pitch through a very considerable length 
of verse, that I know of in any literature. One ought perhaps to except 
certain passages, taken collectively, in Dante's Paradi&>. These are 
doubtless quite as intense and quite as beautiful, and are even more 
moving, as being blended with a definite creed, and the heights and 
depths of emotion, personal and historical, which throb along with 
that. Shelley's theme has no such inner pulse of association; it 
becomes therefore all the more arduous and crucial an attempt." — 
William Rossetti. 

The last Act is " the most sublime hymn ever uttered to the glory of 
the eternal harmony of nature, as apprehended by the human soul in 
communion with her." — F. Rabbe. 

The Act falls into three great divisions, with transitions marked by 
the comments of lone and Panthea, who still retain their role of inter- 
preters. In the first third, the Hours, past and future, and the Spirits 
of the Human Mind join in joyful choruses of thankful glee. The 
second part gives us a grand antiphon of rejoicing between the Spirit 
of the Earth and of the Moon. Finally, Demogorgon, the Power no 
longer of Destruction but of Life, solemnly invokes dead and living 



162 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act iv. 

spirits to listen to his words; and when in answering music they attest 
their presence, and we feel the harmony of the redeemed creation 
speaking through their words, he utters in cadence grave and serene 
his final message, and the final message of Shelley. 

1. i. The pale stars are gone ! The music of these first lyrics is 
tripping, delicate, and light — almost too light, indeed, if we fail to 
remember that it is a prelude to the graver harmony that follows. 

1. 12. Spectres we. This faint strain of minor music leads ex- 
quisitely into the glorious fulness of triumphant song. The literal 
mind will find it difficult to understand how Time can be " borne to his 
tomb in Eternity" while the Earth and Moon yet circle round the 
Sun; but the poetry is none the less beautiful because the symbols are 
mixed. 

1. 54. With the thunder of gladness. " Mr. Rossetti has suggested 
the substitution of " madness " for " gladness " here, to get a rhyme 
instead of an echo. The proposed reading has all to recommend it 
except authority and necessity." — Forman. 

1. 60. Oh, belozv the deep. The broken cadences and repercussive 
notes should be carefully noted through all the Act. They add much 
to the wild fro|dom and charm of the melody. 

1. 116. His Dcedal zvings. A favorite epithet with Shelley. Cf. 
III. i. 26; IV. 416. These Spirits of the Human Mind are of course 
the same who brought consolation to Prometheus in Act I. They " are 
now at last free to soar through all the universe with the frank scepti- 
cism of children. Compare Walt Whitman's lines : — 

'"Omy brave soul ! O farther, farther sail ! 

O daring joy, but safe ! Are they not all the seas of God? 
O farther, farther, farther sail.' 

The swallow-like flight of these spirits, which seem to pass and repass 
before the reader's eyes, gleaming, vanishing, and then gleaming again, 
is subtly suggested by the airy freaks and changes of their songs." — 

TODHUNTER. 

1. 163. Ceaseless, and rapid. The brief and irregular song-flights 
which we have had so far now merge into an anapaestic verse-move- 
ment, even and smooth from the very intensity of its swiftness. 

1. 181. As the bare green hill. One of the wonderfully lovely nature- 



act iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 163 

vignettes, perfect in a few lines, which abound in the Fourth Act. 
The sweet little touch of earthly, homely beauty affords rest and relief 
after the spirit-music to which our ears have become attuned. 

1. 186. ' Tis the deep music. This speech, with the following speech 
of lone, may be understood to describe the melody of the drama. 
Study the difference in tone-color in the two speeches. 

1. 194. But see where. Through this description, we are in full mys- 
ticism. Perhaps the grand duet to follow would be more effective if 
introduced by less elaborate machinery. 

1. 208. By ebbing night. Mr. Thomson points out that the epithet 
is incorrectly used, and compares the correct use in III. ii. ill. Cf. 
the Triumph of Life, 79-84. 

1. 219. White Its countenance. The intense shining of these lines 
is wonderful. 

1. 221. Rossetti proposes to amend: "Its feathers are as plumes of 
sunny frost," thus making the line metrically correct. Perhaps it is 
fantastic to feel a certain charm in the hovering movement of the line 
as it stands. 

1. 236. And from the other. This mythical vision of the Earth, with 
the Spirit sleeping at its heart, is hard to understand, but marvellous 
in suggestion. 

1. 242. Purple and azure. This text conforms to Shelley's original 
edition, and to Mr. Swinburne's preference, in omitting the " and " in- 
serted by Rossetti and Forman between " white " and " green." 

1. 245. Such as ghosts dream. A fine instance of the tenuity of Shel- 
ley's imagination. 

1. 281. Valueless. Meaning, of course, by a usage common in Shel- 
ley, " beyond all value." 

1. 282. Crystalline. See note, III. hi. 292. 

I. 287. The beams flash on. Shelley's curious cosmology, in the 
remainder of this speech, would hardly commend itself to a modern 
geologist. According to him, the remains of ancient civilizations are 
seemingly buried in the deepest strata of the earth, while above them 
lie the fossils of antediluvian monsters, with behemoth and the jagged 
alligator on top. But let us not be too literal. 

II. 319-502. The duet between Earth and Moon. Who are the 
speakers? Mr. Forman considers them to be the Spirit of the Earth 



164 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act iv. 

and the Spirit of the Moon. It is obvious that the old Gaia, the Earth- 
Mother of Act I., is not speaking here; but neither do these speeches, 
with their masculine tone and virile music, seem to come from the child- 
spirit of the Earth whom Panthea has just described so tenderly (261- 
268). May it not be that we have here a third conception, approaching 
to the conception held by modern science, exalted by the imagination? 
There is a realism about the words of the Earth which we do not find 
earlier. Mr. Rossetti says : " On the whole we must, I think, assume 
that Earth and Moon in their large general character as members of 
the solar system are the essential speakers; but represented on the spot 
visibly and emotionally by the Spirit of the Earth, a boy, and the Spirit 
of the Moon, an infant girl, who are touched into a sort of choral con- 
sonance with these more potent entities." James Thomson, with better 
insight says: "The chanting Earth of this Fourth Act is in truth 
neither the mythological Mother nor the simple child-spirit of the pre- 
ceding Acts, but, as was imperative for the full development of the 
poet's thought, our own natural Earth, the living, enduring root of 
these and of all other conceptions, mythologic, imaginative, rational; 
the animate World-sphere instinct with spirit, personified as masculine 
in relation with the feminine Moon, as it would be no less rightly per- 
sonified as feminine in relation with the masculine Sun : the inspired 
singer, soaring impetuously into a far ideal future, casting off from him 
all in his first conceptions that could limit or impede his flight." 

1. 319. The joy, the triumph. The Love which is the theme of the 
drama is here extended from Man to the Universe. The Earth is mas- 
culine, the Moon feminine. The Earth expresses a passionate and 
tumultuous triumph; the Moon a serene yet absorbing joy. The lyrics 
of the two correspond closely in form, differ widely in effect. The 
rhyme- scheme is the same, a a b a a b, except that the Moon gains a 
tenderer, more lingering cadence by a final line, aab a abb. The 
measure of the Earth-songs is iambic pentameter (bis), iambic hexam- 
eter : that of the Moon-songs just one foot shorter, e.g. iambic tetram- 
eter (bis), iambic pentameter, ending with iambic dimeter. The 
music of the earth is "a deep and rolling harmony"; that of the 
moon, under-notes, "clear, silver, icy, keen-awakening tones," — 
echo-melody in a lighter key. 

The punctuation at the close of this stanza and the next is Rossetti's. 



act iv.] PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 165 

1. 367. Winged clouds. The poetry of science. 

1. 370. // interpenetrates. In the preceding stanza, the Earth has 
expressed its exultation in the fall of evil; it now proceeds to chant 
the glory of the new freedom wrought by love. " Love " is the subject 
of the sentence to line 380, and again of lines 385-387. The punctua- 
tion is seemingly obscure. 

1. 394. Man, oh, not men ! A curious expression, in which Shelley 
seems to anticipate the socialistic conception of humanity as a complete 
organism rather than an aggregate of separate units. 

1. 400. Man, one harmonious. The next four stanzas are a glorious 
prean of humanity. The first two stanzas deal with man's nature; the 
last two with his power over art, language, the natural world. The 
concluding stanza reads like a prophecy, which the scientific discoveries 
during the fifty years following Shelley's life went far to fulfil, but which 
is not yet accomplished perfectly. 

1. 432. Half unfrozen. In Shelley's own edition, " half-infrozen." 
Mr. Rossetti adopts Shelley's reading. 

1. 457. Thou art speeding. Notice the trochees. This is the most 
wonderful instance of that use of scientific fact for imaginative purposes 
which makes the treatment of nature in this Act of the Prometheus 
Unbound startling in its modernness. Few instances of this peculiar 
mode of handling occur in the earlier Acts; it almost seems as if a 
prophetic power had descended on Shelley as he wrote of the future 
harmony between Man and Nature. 

1. 493. And the weak day weeps. Mr. Rossetti assigns these two 
lines to the Moon; there is, however, no authority for the reading, and 
we may better consider the passage as a last and most exquisite in- 
stance of the free and broken music which we have found throughout 
the drama. 

Concerning this duo between Earth and Moon, M. Rabbe, Shelley's 
able French biographer, writes : " Michelet in La Mer has written 
like a poet of the symphony of worlds of which science is endeavoring 
to read the score; of the mathematical relation of the stars between 
themselves, which are the harmonic intervals of the celestial music. 
' The Earth,' he says, ' in her tides, greater and less, speaks to her 
sisters the planets. Do they reply? We must believe they do. From 
their fluid elements they too must rise up, conscious of the impulse of 



166 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. [act iv.] 

the Earth. Mutual attraction, the bent of each planet to come forth 
from its egoism, must be the cause of sublime dialogues in the heavens. 
Unfortunately, the ear of man hears but the least part of these.' 

" Shelley heard one of these dialogues, and has marvellously rendered 
it for us in the Fourth Act of the Prometheus Unbound." 

1. 519. Thou, Earth. The grave and quiet music from this point to 
the end reminds us of the organ-like harmony of the Ode to the 
West Wind. 

1- 537- Or as they. There is pathos in this expression of Shelley's 
vague and pantheistic faith. Concerning the future of man on earth, 
his conviction is ardently clear; concerning that beyond the grave, he 
can but suggest a dismal and meaningless alternative. 

1. 554. This is the day. The concluding lyric of the drama sur- 
prises us by its soberness. After the wild rapture of the central lyrics, 
this music sounds subdued and sad; after the vision of redeemed 
humanity, these words take us again, it seems, into the world of con- 
flict and pain. It is better so. Perhaps the very last stanza, with its 
suggestion of meekness, constancy, and hope triumphant even in 
despair, touches the highest spiritual level in the whole great drama. 



EXTRACTS FROM CRITICISMS ON PRO- 
METHEUS UNBOUND. 

[The following extracts aim to give the student some idea of the evolution of 
criticism on the drama. There is an instructive contrast between the tone of the 
earlier and the later criticism.] 

" To our apprehensions, Prometheus is little else but absolute raving; 
and were we not assured to the contrary, we should take it for granted 
that the author was lunatic — as his principles are ludicrously wicked, 
and his poetry a melange of nonsense, cockneyism, poverty, and ped- 
antry." — Literary Gazette, September g, 1820. 

" Whatever may be the difference of men's opinions concerning the 
measure of Mr. Shelley's poetical power, there is one point in regard to 
which all must be agreed, and that is his audacity. ... It would be 
highly absurd to deny that this gentleman has manifested very ex- 
traordinary powers of language and imagination in his treatment of the 
allegory, however grossly and miserably he may have tried to pervert 
its purpose and meaning. But of this more anon. In the mean time, 
what can be more deserving of reprobation than the course which he is 
allowing his intellect to take, and that too at a time when he ought to 
be laying the foundations of a lasting and honourable name? There is 
no occasion for going about the bush to hint what the poet himself has 
so unblushingly and sinfully blazoned forth in every part of his produc- 
tion. With him, it is quite evident that Jupiter, whose downfall has 
been predicted by Prometheus, means nothing more than Religion in 
general, that is, every human system of religious belief; and that, with 
the fall of this, he considers it perfectly necessary (as indeed we also 
believe, though with far different feelings) that every system of human 
government also should give way and perish. ... In short, it is quite 
impossible that there should exist a more pestiferous mixture of blas- 

167 



168 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 

phemy, sedition, and sensuality, than is visible in the whole structure 
and strain of this poem — which, nevertheless, and notwithstanding all 
the detestation its principles excite, must and will be considered by all 
that read it attentively, as abounding in poetical beauties of the highest 
order — as presenting many specimens not easily to be surpassed, of 
the moral sublime of eloquence — as overflowing with pathos, and 
most magnificent in description. Where can be found a spectacle more 
worthy of sorrow than such a man performing and glorying in the per- 
formance of such things?" — Blackwood's, September, 1820. 

" In Mr. Shelley's poetry, all is brilliance, vacuity, and confusion. 
We are dazzled by the multitude of words which sound as if they de- 
noted something very grand or splendid : fragments of images pass in 
crowds before us; but when the procession has gone by, and the 
tumult of it is over, not a trace of it remains upon the memory. The 
mind, fatigued and perplexed, is mortified by the consciousness that its 
labour has not been rewarded by the acquisition of a single distinct 
conception; the ear, too, is dissatisfied; for the rhythm of the verse is 
often harsh and unmusical; and both the ear and the understanding 
are disgusted by new and uncouth words, and by the awkward and 
intricate construction of the sentences. The predominating character- 
istic of Mr. Shelley's poetry, however, is its frequent and total want of 
meaning." — "Shelley: Prometheus Unbound" Quarterly Reviezv, 
October, 1821. 

" In Prometheus Unbound Shelley's faith in the ultimate triumph of 
good found its most complete and ideal expression. He no longer, 
as in The Revolt of Islam blends truth with fiction; scene, stage, and 
actors are in unison. The harmony shows the intellectual accuracy 
and sense of fitness which Shelley was developing. The lyrical drama 
is by no means faultless, and unfortunately for its popularity, the faults 
lie thickest at the outset. But if the reader perseveres, he will be 
swept upward in a whirlwind of song from height to height, till he 
reaches a dizzy summit of lyric inspiration where no foot but Shelley's 
ever trod before. The grandeur of the conception, the vivid embodi- 
ment in beautiful form of inspiring dreams, the majestic soliloquy of 
Prometheus with which the play opens, the exquisite speech of Asia, 
are forgotten in the music of the lyric outbursts, which send a sob of 



PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 169 

hopeless anguish echoing down the slopes of Caucasus, or convey in 
sparkling words the arrowy summons to delight of a fresh spring morn- 
ing, or express with the most deft and unobtrusive harmony of words 
the thrilling intensity of the passion of love. Yet the drama is finely 
conceived and firmly compacted. It cannot be fairly condemned be- 
cause it is wanting in solidity, since its very essence is incorporeal, 
elemental, ideal. In imaginative realization and creative energy, Pro- 
metheus Unbound is a masterly achievement." — " The Character of 
Shelley" Quarterly Review, April, 1887. 

" A genuine liking for Prometheus Unbound may be reckoned the 
touch-stone of a man's capacity for understanding lyric poetry." — 
y. A. Symonds. 

" There is, I suppose, no poem comparable, in the fair sense of that 
word, to Prometheus Unbound. The immense scale and boundless 
scope of the conception; the marble majesty and extra-mundane pas- 
sions of the personages; the sublimity of ethical aspiration; the 
radiance of ideal and poetic beauty which saturates every phase of the 
subject, and almost (as it were) wraps it from sight at times, and trans- 
forms it out of sense into spirit; the rolling river of great sound and 
lyrical rapture; form a combination not to be matched elsewhere, and 
scarcely to encounter competition. There is another source of great- 
ness in this poem, neither to be foolishly lauded, nor (still less) under- 
valued. It is this : that Prometheus Unbound, however remote the 
foundation of its subject matter, and unactual its executive treatment, 
does in reality express the most modern of conceptions — the utmost 
reach of speculation of a mind which burst up all crusts of custom and 
prescription like a volcano, and imaged forth a future wherein man 
should be indeed the autocrat and renovated renovator of his planet. 
This it is, I apprehend, which places Prometheus clearly, instead of 
disputably, at the summit of all later poetry : the fact that it embodies, 
in forms of truly ecstatic beauty, the dominant passion of the dominant 
intellects of the age, and especially of one of the extremest and highest 
among them all, the author himself. It is the ideal poem of perpetual 
and triumphant progression — the Atlantis of Man Emancipated." — 
"Memoir of Shelley," William M. Rossetti. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE PROMETHEUS 
UNBOUND. 



William M. Rossetti. Three Articles in Shelley Society Publica- 
tions, Part I. 

Shelley's Prometheus Unbound : A Study of its Meaning and 

Personages. 
Shelley's Prometheus Unbound Considered as a Poem. 

James Thomson. Notes on Shelley's Prometheus Unbound. The 
Athena um, 1881. 

John Todhunter. A Study of Shelley. Chapters V., VI. 

Sidney Lanier. The English Novel. Lecture V. 

Blackwood's. September, 1820. 

The Quarterly. October, 1821. 

The Literary Gazette. September, 1 820. 

Dublin University Magazine, 1877. 

Gentleman's Magazine. February, 1848. 

Gentleman 's Magazine, 1874. 

Monthly Review, 1 82 1. 

Southern Literary Messenger, 1842. 

Month. Vol. 31. 1884. 

Manchester Qtiarterly. Vol. I. 1882. 

All Lives of Shelley and all critical estimates of his poetry treat at 

more or less length of the Prometheus Unbound. The chief authorities 

to be consulted are as follows : — 

Among the modern biographers : Dowden, Rossetti, Symonds, 

Sharp, Salt, Barnett Smith, Garnett, Rabbe. 

Among critical essayists : Bagehot, Hutton, Matthew Arnold, Swin- 
burne, Stopford Brooke, Shairp, Aubrey de Vere, Bourget. 

The best edition of Shelley's works is that of H. Buxton Forman. 

171 



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Hawthorne and Lemmon's American Literature. A manual 

for high schools and academies $1.12 

Meiklejohn's History of English Language and Literature. 

For high schools and colleges. A compact and reliable state- 
ment of the essentials ; also included in Meiklejohn's English 
Language (see under English Language) So 

Meiklejohn's History of English Literature. 116 pages. Part 

IV. of English Literature, above 40 

Hodgkins' Studies in English Literature. Gives full lists of aids 
for laboratory method. Scott, Lamb, Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
Byron, Shelley, Keats, Macaulay, Dickens, Thackeray, Robert 
Browning, Mrs. Browning, Carlyle, George Eliot, Tennyson, Ros- 
setti, Arnold, Ruskin, Irving, Bryant, Hawthorne, Longfellow, 
Emerson, Whittier, Holmes, and Lowell. A separate pamphlet 
on each author. Price 5 cts. each, or per hundred, $3.00 ; com- 
plete in cloth (adjustable file cover $1.50) 1. 00 

George's Wordsworth's Prelude. Annotated for high school and 

college. Never before published alone. 1.25 

George's Selections from Wordsworth. 168 poems chosen with 

a view to illustrate the growth of the poet's mind and art . . 1.50 

George's Wordsworth's Prefaces and Essays on Poetry. In 

press 
George's Burke's American Orations. Boards, 40c. cloth . . .60 

Corson's Introduction to Browning. A guide to the study of 

Browning's Poetry. Also has 33 poems with notes . . . 1.50 

Corson's Introduction to the Study of Shakespeare. A critical 

study of Shakespeare's art, with examination questions . 1.50 

Corson's Introduction to the Study of Milton. In press. 

Corson's Introduction to the Study of Chaucer. In press. 

Hempl's Old English Grammar and Reader. In press. 

Cook's Judith. The Old English epic poem, with introduction, trans- 
lation, glossary and fac-simile page 1.50 

Cook's English Prose Style and the English Bible. In Press. 

Simonds' Sir Thomas Wyatt and his Poems. 168 pages. With 

biography, and critical analysis of his poems 75 

Hall's Beowulf. A metrical translation. In press. 

See also our list of books for the study of the English Language. 

D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS. 

BOSTON, NEW YORK & CHICAGO. 



